Oxford town

I was half-listening to Rick Steves on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me!" the other weekend as I made another pot of coffee when he said something absolutely unforgivable. Peter Sagal asked if there were any place that Steves absolutely hated, and his first response was "don't go to Oxford - it's a tourist trap."

Again, unforgivable.

I adored every minute I spent in Oxford. It was my dream school for a number of years, despite my never once having the grades that would even put me in competition for admission. Visiting was everything I'd hoped it would be - full of history, charm and beauty (and a great deal quieter than London). 

So I'm posting these pictures (several months late) to spite Rick Steves. It's a beautiful town, and I had a lovely day there. The library tour nearly brought me to tears, we had lunch in a church that was older than Protestantism, walked around the Magdalen deer park, and saw as many colleges as we could in a two-hour window before we had to take the train back to the city. 

  

Forty Eight Hours in Paris

I think I lead a relatively normal life for a middle-class American.

I worked throughout high school and then college, and now that I've graduated, I get to continue looking for more work.

(Which I've been doing for the last five months with no luck) 

But I knew this trip was coming up, and that it would be an opportunity to do a little bit of what I missed out on by not studying abroad for a semester. 

It was my first time in Paris, and I knew two days was a hilariously short amount of time to see the thousand year-old city.  But it rained, a sign of good fortune.