Yesterday was a bright, sunny (albeit cool) afternoon in Oxford. I found myself quite literally about to fall asleep in front of my computer. I wanted to go home and nap, but was too lazy to even want to stand up from the desk at the library. My brain was far too mushy for writing. Somehow, through the haze we were both in, Andrew came up with the brilliant idea that we ought to go on a bus tour. Fantastic idea!
Oxford has been very crowded this week. Many tourists are visiting, but the undergraduates are also busy heading out of town for the break (most colleges require them to leave for the break), so their mums and dads have been driving in to fetch them. Additionally, for the first time since 1987, the Unversity is electing a new Chancellor. The previous Chancellor passed away over the Christmas break. Anybody who has ever taken a degree from the University is eligible to vote and the voting was in the Divinity School of the library (where I work). More than 155,000 people were eligible and the University estimated that about 30,000 would turn up. The voting began yesterday and finished today (it went from 9 until 5 both days). So with all that going on, the streets of central Oxford have been bustling.
With such lovely weather and so many tourists and students to gawk at, we couldn't resist the pull of the tour bus. The cost was 7 pounds per person for the green "Guide Friday" tour that I had heard was the better of the two.
We hopped on board and went upstairs where there were plenty of seats and a live guide in front. She asked us where we were from and Andrew said, "Summertown". LOL. That's the part of Oxford where we live. I explained that we were members of Hertford College.
The bus tour was really disappointing, though. It was surprisingly short, not going far outside the city center, and, worst of all, the guide gave some information that was completely inaccurate!
The tour did a good job of covering the main streets in central Oxford, but didn't go much outside it. The guide said we went to North Oxford, but we weren't very far in and we just went down one street and then back toward the middle of town. The guide gave a lot of fairly trivial information about things as we passed. She didn't go into any in-depth or interesting stories about anyplace, really. She's say, "This is X College," and then list several well-known alumni or explain in about 6 words an interesting fact about the history or architecture.
The rather cursory nature of the tour can probably be attributed to the fact that the bus was going so quickly. It just hummed along at regular speed (about 20 mph most of the time). By the time the guide got a few words out about a given site, we were in front of another site. And the bus stopped or slowed very few times other than at stop lights.
Unfortuntately, we heard two inaccurate facts in our first few minutes on the bus, we were hesitant to believe her facts later. She said that a carving atop a building near Pitt Rivers Museum was an ostrich. It's not an ostrich, it's a Dodo, because the natural history museum just accross the street from it has in its collection a dead Dodo. Anyway, it's NOT an ostrich. She also said, as soon as we got on, that the Bodleian uses a pneumatic glass tube system to shoot book requests around the library at 80 miles per hour. Totally wrong. Requests are handled electronically. The books go on a conveyor system that tops out well under 5 mph.
So, if you are relatively familiar with Oxford and have a good map, I recommend against a bus tour unless you just want to ride around and see stuff. A bus tour would be a good way to get a lay of the land and even get from place to place (for the price of the ticket, you can get on and off the bus all day, so you can use it as transportation from attraction to attraction). However, if you are going on a bus tour for interesting info or to get a good look at a lot of interesting things, don't bother. It's a good start to a stay in Oxford if you want to add to your visual map. Otherwise, do a good walking tour where the guide spends more time talking about each site.
Posted by Erin at March 15, 2003 07:13 PM