Day 4: Oxford

After posting the blog yesterday, I set out for a bookshop I vaguely remembered from the last time I was here. Blackwell’s. I found it, looked over the cookbook section for anything new and interesting and bought the third in the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest, written by Steig Larrson and not yet available in US. I’ve read the first two: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Well I started reading about 5:30, fully intending to stop for a bite of dinner. But I couldn’t stop. Just kept on reading until Katherine returned about 9:30. So exciting. I wasn’t hungry for anything but more of this fascinating and absorbing book. The other two items in this photo are my travel journal (thank you, Anne) and my little dinner journal in which I write all the food I'm eating on the trip.

I determined that today would be an art day. The small Modern Art Oxford was a wonderful little museum that last time I was here. But unfortunately I found out this morning that it was closed for refurbishing until April 17. So I set out on a different path: The Bodleian Library and The Sheldonian Theatre. But I also stopped at Marks & Spencer to look in their food area which is quite good. I love supermarkets and this one was full of women doing their shopping. Two things were especially interesting: The labeling here is much more complete than in the US and it is required to include the country of origin. The only coffee they sold was Fair Trade, which means that the farmers growing the coffee aredealt with directly and are given a better price than they would get on the open market working through a middle person.

And can you imagine what I did next? Back to the hotel for more reading…