Magical Oxford

Oxford must be one of the most inspiring cities we’ve ever visited. Not only home and place of education to many legendary writers, artists and musicians, but also a popular filming location to several amazing films such as Harry Potter, X-Men: First Class andThe Golden Compass.

We went, we enjoyed and now we want to share our Oxford experience with all of you!

THE EAGLE AND CHILD

Our marvellous Oxford day began with a delicious lunch at The Eagle and Child. This place has such an impressive history that it even has it’s own Wikipedia page:

“The pub had been part of an endowment belonging to University College since the 17th century. It has associations with the Inklings writers’ group which included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.”

We ate our lunch underneath a wooden plaque with a Lewis quote. Quite lovely!

Instagram: The Eagle and Child

WALKING TOUR

After lunch we rolled out onto the streets with our full tummies and met up with a lovely lady called Heidi from Walking Tours of Oxford. She took us around telling us many, many stories about all these beautiful old buildings and marvellous locations.

I would strongly recommend a walking tour in Oxford to anyone who has a couple of extra hours to spend. I imagine it would be simply impossible to find all these little alleyways and courtyards without someone local to show you the way.

It’s not hard to understand why Oxford has inspired legendary stories like Alice in Wonderland, the Narnia books and the trilogy of His Dark Materials.

If you look carefully or listen closely to your guide you might spot some details in the buildings and in the little alleyways that look a lot like some of the characters and objects in these stories..

And I really have to mention Radiohead. Did you know that these guys started their little band and career in Oxford, right?

CHRIST CHURCH COLLEGE

One of the most impressive locations to visit was the Christ Church College. Not only because the building itself, but because their Great Hall is literally a twin to Hogwart’s hall in the Harry Potter movies. The movie makers were so impressed by it that they ended up replicating it in the film studios. Of course, this one is lacking the floating candles and ghosts, but standing in the middle of it truly is a magical experience.

During this tour we also saw the tree used in Harry Potter in New College and a few filming locations from the movies I mentioned earlier, the Divinity School and Exeter College that was used in filming of Inspector Morse. My all time favourite writer Philip Pullman studied there, too, so wow! That was a great fangirl moment right there!

We have some sceneframing photos from Oxford coming up, too!

MALMAISON OXFORD

We finished our tour outside of our hotel for the night, Malmaison. What makes his hotel special is the fact that it’s all built into former prison blocks, with cells converted as guest rooms. It’s all very comfortable and quite luxurious of course, but you can still spot a lot of original details in the interior design.

I loved it, I really hope we could go back for a night or two and bring some friends with us.

They also have a cell there that was left in its original state and with a little help from our friend Katie / Traveling Pants we got this spooky Vine clip done..

Instagram: A nice morning bath | My note to Malmaison

THE TROUT

After a short rest at our lovely hotel we headed to a 17th century pub a little outside of Oxford called The Trout. It’s definitely worth the little drive!

The Trout sits right on the banks of the river Thames and has an impressive history – well, no surprise there. Seems like everything around here was involved in something quite legendary.

We had a long, lazy, enjoyable dinner with our little group of bloggers and as a (sticky) cherry on top, our friends even got the chef’s mom’s recipe for sticky toffee pudding!

I adored this visit to Oxford and can’t wait to take some of my friends with me to see it all. There’s also a lot of sceneframing we could do so we’ll have a real reason to go back!

Not that you really need any sort of excuse to visit Oxford other than immersing yourself fully into film&lit history.