Greetings from England! Day 17

I'm currently looking for a cheap hotel room in Paris. The cheaper ones are a further to the city center of Paris. That's ok, right? UGH. Whatever, it's giving me a headache.
GAH! RIP IN PANTS! DAMN IT!

Oxford and Cambridge:
I did my college week-end. I got myself a sweater and a decorative plate from each university. The 2 oldest universities in the English-speaking world [ I don't need to say how super prestigious these schools are]. 2 that I can never, ever get accepted to [I didn't even pass the criteria for EAP hahahaha]....even if I did get accepted, I don't think I can afford to go to these schools.
They're both kinda like the UC system...each college is independent of each other, but has a central governing system.
Architecturally speaking, they are very similar. One can definitely confuse one place to the next....
Anyway, I had a great time just being there. A lot of history happened in those collective 60+ colleges...

Oxford:
It took almost 3 hours to get to Oxford by train. First stop was Christ Church college. A lot of Hogwarts scenes from the Harry Potter movies were filmed here...I was very temped to scream SORTING HAT in the halls. We also saw the Dining Hall with portraits of famous [or historical] alumni of Christ Church...including John Locke, William Penn [the guy who founded Pennsylvania] and Charles Dodgson [Lewis Carroll]

Christ Church and Alice in Wonderland:
-Alice is based on a read person, Alice Liddell, the daughter of the Dean.
-The White Rabbit is based on Alice's father.

We also went to the Christ Church Cathedral...according to the pamphlet, it is one of the smallest Anglican cathedrals in England.
We also went to Alice's Store...it's the store where Alice Liddell used to buy her candy...it's now a store that sells all kinds of Alice in Wonderland/ Through the Looking Glass memorabilia. They also sell the candy that Alice used to buy...it didnt look good.

We walked outside and we ended up at Merton College where J.R.R. Tolkien taught.
DSHAKJSHKJFA!!! OMG TOLKIEN! yea....I had a freak out...I also saw one of the houses Tolkien lived at..it was on Merton Street...It was the last house he lived in before he died. Tolkien studied at Exeter College [it's too far from the main streets in Oxford] and he started teaching at Pembroke College...but he got offered a job at Merton and he stayed there. While grading a paper he wrote "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," the opening to The Hobbit.
We also saw Magdalen College where C.S. Lewis taught. He's buddies with Tolkein. We also stopped by the Oxford Botanical Garden where the fountain was the inspiration for where Lyra meets [I forgot who] in The Golden Compass.
There are many sites in Oxford that inspired literature. [Warning: the stuff I will be talking about will be Tolkien]
Exeter College: Tolkien invented Quenya, which is based on Finnish. He also wrote part of The Silmarillion here.
The Eagle and Child Pub: named after Zeus, as an eagle, kidnaps Ganymede. It's where The Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia were first read aloud by the Inkling Society.
Le Eurobar used to be called The Welsh Pony: the inspiration for The Prancing Pony
Radcliffe Camera: the inspiration for Sauron's temple to Morgoth on Numenor.

HAD CHINESE FOOD! DUCK FRIED RICE AND HOME MADE NOODLES! We ate at a restaurant called Shanghai 30...the interior is very 1930s China...very Lust, Caution.

Cambridge:
Rainy day in Cambridge. The first thing we did was go Punting on the River Cam. The person who was punting looked like Peter Pan, except she is a girl...she's still in high school. Yea...she looks like Peter Pan.
It was a very relaxing ride...except when it started to rain...YAY FOR THE UMBRELLAS THAT CAME WITH THE PUNT!

Had waffles for lunch. I had one that was called Fitzwilliam [and yes, I only got it because Fitzwilliam is Mr. Darcy's first name]. The waffle is topped with lots of fresh fruit and whipped cream on the side. I also had another one called Trinity..it's pretty much like having really beefy spaghetti sauce on my waffle. Strange, but really good.

We had a walking tour of Cambridge by a very nice, old gentleman. We went inside King's College Chapel [which is more like a cathedral! it's sooo big!]. It took about 100 years to build. It was started by Henry VI and Henry VIII was the one who finished it. Inside the chapel, the initials of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn can be found on the organ. The stain-glass windows depict both old and new testament.
We also saw other colleges, such as Gonville and Caius [Stephen Hawking teaches there], St. John's [which they call Wedding Cake because it's so ornate], Queen's College, Corpus Christi and Trinity College [where Prince Charles went to college and where a certain Newton saw falling apples].
I satisfied my craving for ice cream! I got a double scoop from the ice cream man on Honeycomb Meringue and Raspberry swirl with a stick of flake [flakes of cadbury chocolate compressed into a stick].

Midsummer's Night Dream:
At 1 PM, I get a phone call from my friend, Karla, selling me her tickets to Midsummer's Night Dream at the Globe. Jeany bargained it down to 30 pounds....that was funny shit! Karla started screaming "fucking asian bargainers" on the phone! LOL
Anyway, I was really happy we got tickets because I really wanted to see Midsummer's Night Dream, but it's been sold out. The gods were smiling down upon me yesterday. The Globe theater is actually not as big as I imagined it to be. ...very open to the elements. Thank goodness we weren't groundlings because I didn't feel like watching the show in the rain! The guy who played Demetrius was "in disposed" and he did not have an understudy, so one of the guys who plays one of the fairies took his part. He was very good considering he only got that part that day. After intermission, he had the script with him on stage [but he didn't really read it...]
Had greek food for dinner...it was REALLY GOOD! It made me like egg-plant [in form of hummus]. Because of our lolly-gagging, we were the last people to get on the bus...it's OK coz we got pictures!