Volume 2, Day 44.2
My destination for the day was Oxford. Because I ended up coming to England a day early, I had a day to myself to kill. The rain never let up as the Megabus worked its way north across England. What a miserable place to spend a summer, I don’t know why its so popular. As soon as I got off the bus, I headed over to the hostel I had booked to drop my suitcase for the day. I had several hours to kill before I could check in, and I headed out into the streets to have a look around.
The city is impressive. It’s medieval looking with almost all of the old buildings made of this tan stone. There was a market on a square, mostly selling street food, but I wasn’t quite hungry yet for lunch. I needed to get out of the drizzling weather and get some caffeine in my system. I found the main drag, full of fast food chains, Uniqlo shops, and a handful of money changers. After the minimal amount of price comparison, I changed over a bit more money into pounds to improve the average of my exchange rate then settled into a Starbucks with a venti “filter” coffee. I guess “drip” is an exclusively American term. I was surprised that the Starbucks was no more expensive than McDonalds across the street or any of the other coffee shops I had passed.
There was a spacious upstairs seating area and after a quick trip to the bathroom to put my contacts back in, I settled in for a while on my computer. Most of the guests were kids, probably here for summer camps. At one point, and entire class took over a large table next to me and I eavesdropped on the morale building session lead by their nonnative teacher.
The streets of Oxford are wildly international. It has got the greatest concentration of Asian restaurants I have seen since I left China, and I heard more Chinese on the streets than English. Funny how that works. I go to Germany and all I hear is English, but in England, no one speaks English. I suppose I should have expected Oxford to attract a lot of tourists. It is world famous and all.
By the time the Starbucks started filling up with teenagers bringing in bags of McDonald’s takeout, I decided I needed to get some food. I had priced a few restaurants with displayed menus because I needed to quickly learn what things cost in England. Fast food is 7 pounds, a basic meal around 10 pounds, a 2 course lunch is 14 pounds. So the street food in the market would be a good meal. Now that it was lunch time, the market was fully in swing and there was enough of a break in the rain that one could sit outside without getting wet. I took a long look at all the international food and settled on a stall marked “Goa.” It was great, rice with two vegetable curries (potatoes, dal) and two meat curries. I needed some bread at the end to soak up all the goodness, but alas I didn’t have any.
It was a few minutes until 1:30, but instead of heading straight back to the hostel, I decided to pop into a Tesco to investigate England via the supermarket. Prices looked fairly reasonable overall, though I think the Paris shops certainly created a bias. It is true that the main and most affordable drink is cider, while beers are pretty pricey at 1-2 pounds each. By the way, a Pound buys as many Euros as a Euro buys dollars. So, after getting used to thinking in “dollars” indirectly through Won and Yen, I could remember to add a mental markup on prices in Euros, now I have to do it a second time.
While I was in the shop, I went ahead and bought toothpaste, which I had run out of, some digestive biscuits (for later), and a big bottle of water to encourage me to hydrate since I had not been drinking much water the last few days.
The hostel is a bit rundown, but the staff are friendly and the prices are reasonable. I checked in and immediately went for a nap. Afterwards, I popped in the shower and had myself an afternoon coffee with biscuits. Fully refreshed by this point, I headed back out into the nasty weather to explore the city.
Oxford is quite big and has all the shopping and dining options one could hope for in a bigger city while retaining the charm of a small medieval town. It was nice and the pubs looked pretty inviting. Eventually tiring of the wet, I headed back to the hostel to chill for a while and read, but I got distracted by a movie on the TV in the lounge. When the movie (Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 2) ended, I ran out to the Tesco to get some stuff for dinner with a 5 pound spending limit. I should have done a salad or something light, but with the weather, I wanted hearty and ended up with a big meal of roasted chicken legs, mashed potatoes, and spinach. These convenience meals, in between a frozen dinner and a fresh meal, are dangerous stuff.
It was a quiet night. I ate my dinner and watched Youtube videos for a while before going back to reading and finishing “The Big Sleep.” I was in bed by 11 and found it strange that although my 12 bed dorm only had 4 residents, we were all crammed together. Okay, its really just that I don’t understand why a guy chose the bed in between two clearly occupied beds and then spread is stuff out so that I had to climb over his suitcase to get to my bed.
| Starbucks coffee | 2.1 |
| Curry | 6.5 |
| Tesco | 1.39 |
| Hostel | 20.7 |
| Panhandler | 0.5 |
| Tesco dinner | 4.27 |
| Total: | 35.46 GBP (353.9 RMB) (USD 51.42) |
Running Total: 16580.4 RMB (USD 2409.28)
Daily Average: 376.8 RMB (USD 54.76)
So, I definitely lost a lot of value of my money changing Euros to Pounds Sterling, which means the exchange rate I will be using for my accounting here goes 1 pound to 9.98 yuan, while Google lists it as 8.6 today. If only Britain had switched to the Euro.