Joyce to the World: Daytrip in Bath, Punting in Oxford
During my recent stay in Oxford, UK to take up a short course on Philosophy under Oxford Summer Courses - part of our student activities were visits to different places and tourist spots outside the campus; kind of like a field trip that aimed to bond and educate us students.
One of my most favorite places that we had gone to was the city of Bath, just an hour and a half bus ride away from Oxford. It's popular for its beautiful 18th-century Georgian architecture, as well as being home to the original Roman-era Baths, statues, and temples.
Funny story - one of my groupmates and closest friends I've made from this trip, Hardik, thought that we were going to a place called 'bath' to take a bath. He brought a bathrobe in his backpack and only told me his lapse in understanding once we were having lunch. I swear I'm not making this up. I was laughing so hard I didn't even get to take a photo. HAHAHAHA. Here's Hardik:
Hardik is from India, and he is one of the nicest, coolest guys Ive ever had the pleasure of making friends with. He also taught me a couple of Hindi phrases, and he was my drinking buddy throughout the entire trip. He's an engineering student in India, and I've been trying to convince him to come visit the Philippines. He says, next year.
Beautiful. Impressive historical preservation and educational immersion awaits anybody who visits Bath. There is an audio tour device that will be given to you once you enter the Roman baths, which contains historical insights corresponding to numbered spots around the tour.
After a day trip to Bath, we took the bus back to Oxford to do some classic Oxford past time: punting! I'm not exactly sure what it is, but we got to row a boat with a small paddle assisted by a big-ass metal metal rod (for navigation) on the River Cherwell (a major tributary of the River Thames) on a cold English afternoon so it was pretty interesting. True to our millenial selves - we were complaining, and yelling at each other while struggling to make punting look easybreezy, tried our very hardest not to fall into the water but at the same time kinda sorta secretly wished somebody would so we could Snap it, and powered through horrid cold through roaring conversations and laughters and hugging it out.
Magic is trust embodied in new friends and experiences and great cities teeming with history, and history being made as we revisit it. Thank you, Bath and Oxford! About to upload my photos and tell you all about Oxford Summer Courses in the next post, stay tuned.
Travel far and wide,
Joyce