Day 44 – to Oxford
- After we finished packing, we went back to our favorite bagel shop for a quick breakfast and to our favorite convenience store for our morning caffeine.
- Back at the hotel, I got a little work done before we needed to leave. Today’s tasks were about learning a new video editing software, DaVinci Resolve. I’m starting to get the hang of it and liking it better than iMovie for the additional features it has.
- Our train ride was nice and quiet. I was able to get some work done despite the rocky ride. Hopefully, my errant finger on the track pad didn’t mess anything up.
- Our hotel was not too far from the train station, but in the middle of the afternoon, it was a hot walk. And then, since we are in England, there is no AirCon and our room was hot, too. We left to go find drinks. They didn’t have AirCon either, but at least they had a breezeway. We ended up staying there until dinner and for a bit after before making the hot trek back to the hot hotel room. At least by then, it was a tiny bit cooler and we could open the window. We both starfished to try to cool off. Later, we grabbed drinks from the Honesty Bar at the hotel.
Day 45 – Oxford humidity
- Our routine in this heat was rough: get dressed, go to breakfast, go back to our room, undress, starfish into a nap until it was too hot to stay in the room any longer, get dressed, and go somewhere that might/maybe/hopefully have AirCon.
- After the construction-hike to the terminal and getting on a bus, we encountered a nosy & bossy woman. She wanted to tell us everywhere we needed to go, like a meadow, where she used to work, in the middle of some church ground, in full sun, in this heat. She also kept asking details about our hotel, like the name and the address. We just kept saying we didn’t remember and we just knew where it was. What a freak. No, I’m not telling you where we are staying. We finally got to our area and got off the bus.
- The Museum Modern Art Oxford was just a short walk from the bus. It wasn’t too hot in some parts, but it was unbearable in others. We saw some of the free stuff.
- For lunch, we found Nandos in the back corner of a bougie open-air shopping “arcade”/mall. We loved them in Australia. They seem a bit different here, a tad less casual and with a broader menu, but the food was still good.
- In so much heat, a movie sounded great, so we bought tickets to Minions & Monsters. It was cute. It was not as good as the others, but still worth seeing.
- At The Castle pub, we had some beer and chatted with a lovely bartender. She was nervous about some exam results she was to get the next day. He gave her a lucky toonie for good luck.
- During the (92% of the) eclipse, we noticed some kids gathered in the breezeway of the arcade/mall. We didn’t think much of it. Eventually we also ordered dinner. We chatted with two couples near us that were on the pre-cruise excursion for a Viking River Cruise.
- And then, we got “locked in” at the bar. A huge gaggle of about 150 Pi Alpha Kappa “pledges” (Punk-Ass Kids) were causing some trouble for traffic in the area. The night before one of them had brandished a knife at the bartender, so with an abundance of caution, she locked the doors. She told us and the other table of guests that she’d let us out any time we wanted, but she didn’t want the PAKs to be able to get in. They were just being brazen shit-heads and didn’t scare us, so I ordered another beer. Well, they had closed the till and run the cash bag up to the Chef’s apartment upstairs, so they gave me a free beer. Between the eclipse and the half way point for the kids’ summer break, it was a crazy night in Oxford.
- We then had the long walk back to our hotel. We stopped at a nearby store for drinks. Once in our room, we discovered they had come into our room (we forgot the DND sign), closed the window (what? why?), and turned off the fans 😠 moving some of our possessions to do so 😠. Full stop: do NOT touch other people’s things. The fans and window were our only source of anything to cool down our room. Assholes. If a couple of fans–and we had to “fight” for the second one–to keep the heat at bay is going to tank their business, then they aren’t managing their business well. I suspect they are at risk of going under. Nothing has been updated in years. Some stuff hasn’t even been cleaned in years.
- We spent the night working, taking showers to wash away the heat of the day, and enjoying drinks.
Day 46 – Oxford is hot and tired
- Breakfast was included with our stay as long as you were there by 0900. So we repeated the get dressed, go eat, come back, get undressed, and sleep until it was too hot to stay in our room. Honestly, it felt a bit like a cruise.
- We grabbed a bus to take us just beyond city center to the Ashmolean Museum because it should have had AirCon. One woman on the bus was quite bossy with her adult children. It was so bad that I nearly called her bossy to her face.
- Then the lady at the front of the museum was the same way to me (and he was the one talking to her, not me). I declared it to be Bossy Thursday. Fine, they can have the day after a full eclipse. What is that? Once every five years?
- The museum didn’t have good AirCon and started with boring ancient Egyptian exhibits we’ve all seen a hundred times. And it was busy since it is free and has AirCon.
- We must have been having a good enough time, because 1300 sneaked up on us. We beelined it for the theater, ordered hot dogs and Cokes and settled in with Spiderman. It was a great way to miss the hottest part of the day, 99⁰F/37⁰C. I had forgotten too much, so we decided to have a Spiderman movie marathon when we get home.
- After searching for another bar with any AirCon and not finding any, we headed back to Castle (where we knew the -1 level was cooler) for drinks before dinner.
- Thaikun (cute name) for dinner. I left my water bottle on the table and our very sweet server chased me across the street to bring it to me. Awwww.
- We popped into the OXO bar and were quite happy there with just one other couple and tolerable music. But then a very loud group of very drunk people came in, so we bailed. It must have been a night for it because a group of guys were high-fiving everyone on their evening walk. We fueled up at the market and went back to our hotel.
Day 47 – getting out of the hell that is Oxford, to Birmingham
- After breakfast, we learned that our train was canceled. He got a new app to buy new train tickets (so we could be sure to get a refund of the cancelled ones instead of just credit that we might not be able to use). Since we were up, we could make the next train if we hurried, so we packed the last few things and flew out the door. Getting out of the place with weak Wifi and too much heat sounded divine.
- At the train station, we were relegated to standing, but at least we had shade.
- Our train was old and needed an upgrade, but it was very clean.
- Some guy who was ignoring the big red and white numbers for seats and was trying to read the tiny (LCD?) screens beside each one….to the point we couldn’t settle into our own seats.
- And then, we observed “condiments man” from first class. He wanted condiments and had walked all the way back to our car looking for them, but they didn’t have any. I carry tiny essentials (salt & pepper); he should do the same.
- As we were leaving, Mr Seat Searcher couldn’t even let me get my bag down before he was all up in my business to know about the reservations for our seats. He was so close I could feel his breath, so I said, “Can I help you?” and he said he was trying to read the reservations. I think he was a freeloader trying to avoid the conductor. Whatever the deal, he was an asshole.
- It was a hot walk to our hotel to stow our bags. We then sat down in the hot lobby and looked for food using their bad wifi. Our hotel was In the middle of a large Chinatown, so finding food I wanted wasn’t easy.
- A nearby “arcade”/mall looked indoors (it was still open-air) and the place we picked was a Kids Eat Free place. The food was fine, but the service was so bad that he had them remove the service charge.
- We walked around the mall for a bit. Going through one store, they had a Lego model of Ozzy, we got closer to see how they did the fringe on his jacket (small strips of thin leather) and got accosted by a perfume sales woman who gave me one of the scented strips and said she’d be back with a sample. It reeked so we ran away.
- Eventually, we landed on a funky jungle-themed indoor putt putt place. The “ambiance” was very loud, so we couldn’t stay long, but it was the coolest place we had found so far.
- Back at the hotel, we could get into our room. Of course we found that the AirCon isn’t really air conditioning. We opened the windows the 1.5” they allow and set up the tiny fan I keep in my purse. It’s not much, but at least it’s something combined with the fan thing they had.
- We found an Italian place that was kind of busy, but had seating. At first, the server thought we were with the theater crowd. (The Hippodome was showing Mrs. Doubtfire the Musical just across the way.) We let him know we just wanted the regular menu and not the Theater pre-fix. He looked relieved.
- After dinner, we found a great pub: Fox bar. The bouncer was super nice and wonderfully chatty; he reminded us of one of our security guys at our building. He had also lived in a lot of places and seemed to know everyone who came down the street. We had a great time talking with him.
- After that, we wandered through the gayborhood, found an arcade (a game one, not a shopping one) to wander through, saw a couple of hen parties, hit a store for drinks, and went back to the room to work/chill.
Day 48 – Birmingham
- I was up first and finished a little video before we got ready to leave. We found breakfast at Tim Hortons (timbits!) and found ourselves among the chaos that is the aftermath of a race.
- In search of AirCon, we toured the large (and very cool) library and then walked around that area a bit. It was sad that the top floor with the view was closed. We even saw a young couple getting their wedding portraits done.
- Our lunch at Fat Hippo was too loud and came with bad service.
- We went back to the room to rest and regroup. He napped while I worked.
- From three dinner options he found, we settled on pizza. We even got a reservation. At the restaurant, there was a going-away party that had a banner that said “we were just starting to like you,” and we found that funny. The place is known for their “250-year old” (appx) sourdough starter. It took forever to get seated. At least a third of the restaurant was empty, but people were waiting for tables. Then, when we did get a table and a look at the menu, we didn’t like anything we saw. I noticed a gaggle of staff members hanging out in the back, not working. As we were leaving, a guy stopped us to ask about the service. We told him the menu wasn’t for us, but that we also hadn’t seen a server in the 10 minutes we had been there. They left right behind us. We found a ramen place around the corner, instead.
- We saw a ton of hen and birthday parties. At least four of them were cowgirl themed.
- Shakespeare pub was lovely for a couple of drinks. We got great service and had a good view of the crowd wandering the streets. The European Athletics Championships was held in Birmingham. The race stuff we saw was part of that, but also a way for the locals to run the same races (later in the day) that the athletes did. The men and women both won their 4×100 races. But the star was sprinter Amy Hunt who secured a golden hat-trick of European titles. She won the 100m sprint, the 200m sprint and helped the women win the 4x100m relay team claim gold with a time of 42.05 seconds.
- We stopped for in-room nightcap supplies at “Candy & Liquor” where they sell a bunch of DIY drink sets like a cup with a chilled can of Coke and an airplane bottle of whiskey. They also sell candy and chips. My beer was a tad pricey and too warm, but they were open. Two women in front of me were having the hardest time deciding what shot to buy (from behind the counter?), so the guy checked me out (meowt!) ahead of them.
- Back at the room, I cranked out some work and he tried to keep up with a parallel project. We made zero plans for the next day.
Day 49 – more Birmingham
- We had a repeat of breakfast at Tim Horton’s and then got Cokes from a neighborhood store.
- After running a quick errand, we went back to the hotel to plan our afternoon, but finding nothing, we decided to make it a working/resting day.
- For a late lunch, we found a good Thai place. Pad See Ew is my favorite Asian food of all time.
- Later in the day, we walked toward a college campus, found Craven Arms for drinks and a good sandwich, and enjoyed hearing some women loudly singing group karaoke in their dorm room. To their credit, they stopped by 10pm. On the way back to our hotel, we ran across a large group of quite drunk people. They were harmless, but funny.
