The Rasmusens in Oxford

We liked the Tower of London. We went in by train to Paddington and then took the Circle Line to Tower Hill. In Oxford, Dad parked while the rest of the family bought tickets. He took quite a while to find the way to the parking lot across from the station, and then it took 15 pounds only in coins for the Saturday parking (20 pounds peak time!). It’s only 4.50 if you have a cellphone, but we didn’t. A cab to the station would have been cheaper. Anyway, Dad rushed to get change from Mother, then rushed back, had to go to a second machine since the first was broken, but we did make our train on time.

At the Tower, we followed the Beefeater on his short outside tour and then went in to the Jewel Room. It had a moving beltway past the main crown jewels, which worked well to keep people moving (and you could go back to see the other side of the exhibit). The children liked Queen Victoria’s little 1870 diamond crown. Dad liked the Cullinan diamond in the sceptre.
Faith was royally freaked out by the guards who wore the huge bearskin hats that practically cover the eyes, carry rifles or something scary looking, and walk like robots making harsh noises with their shiny boots and yells.

We also spent a lot of time in the White Tower, the old keep in the center of the Tower where the armoury is. You can see it behind Lilli in the cannon picture.

We then took a bus to Trafalgar Square, thinking we might go to Kensington to the Natural History Museum or a big playground there, but we were too tired. We stopped and ate hot roasted chestnuts, which Amelia loved. Then we went to the National Gallery for half an hour, mainly looking at the Gainsboroughs and suchlike.

So we went to Chinatown instead, to the Wong Kei Restaurant, a large and well-known but not fancy one that Mother went to in her student days. It’s not quite as good as it used to be, alas– regular cabbage instead of Chinese cabbage now, for example. But we enjoyed it.

Our trip home was pleasantly uneventful. The chilren behaved wonderfully all day, in fact, tired though they became.

The Oxford Natural History Museum is good. The anthropology museum, the Pitts-Rivers, is connected right at the back of it, but closes half an hour earlier. One nice thing is the Touching exhibit. You can actually touch fossils and stuffed animals! That’s what the pictures are showing. Around November 10 Dad went with Lilli and Benjamin while the others were shopping for birthday presents for Lilli. Actually, what the kids liked best is the booth that’s dark inside so you can turn on an ultraviolet light and see rocks (and Benjamin’ shirt stripes) fluoresce.

Lily had a good 4th birthday party on November 11, which is called Remembrance Day here. People (including Daddy) wear poppy pins that are distributed in the weeks before. For her birthday, Abby, Usu, Noah, Isaac, Isabella, and Diego came over–3 friends from her preschool, and some others. Of course all the brothers and sisters were around, and Amelia, in particular, worked hard to get the party ready, drawing and cutting out figures to decorate (including a superman for Diego) and drawing the Unicorn you see here for “Pin the Horn on the Unicorn”.

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We went trick-or-treating last night with Lisa, Hazel, and Archie from next door, some of their friends, and Joy, a classmate of Amelia’s. We went to lots of houses along the two or three block stretch here. Faith was very good, saying “Ank you” with alacrity once she caught on.

The Harcourt Arboretum is the out-of-town part of the Oxford Botanical Gardens. We went there a couple of weeks ago. The statue Amelia and Elizabeth are climbing on was the only on we saw— I wonder how it came to be there, almost hidden under a tree?

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This picture of a peacock gives a bit of the feel of walking around there.
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I was pleased to see a fly agaric mushroom, a poisonous kind of amanita that I’d not seen before.

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The kids liked this tree– a magnolia, I think– the best.

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