Oxford, a place we had never been despite it being less than 90mins away... and while we probably didn't see it at it's best (it was very, very cold this weekend), this weekend away certainly had it's high points!
I got up super early on the Saturday morning and went to Asda before we departed at just before 9am. Amazingly, by 10:10am we were in the car park of the Jury's Inn Hotel and as we had booked an 'executive room', we were allowed to book in straight away - result. Our 'executive' status also awarded us a 10% voucher to be redeemed in the Marco Pierre White restaurant, although this turned out to be less of a discount and more of waiver as I shall explain later.
Because of the exorbitant parking charges in central Oxford, we opted to take the bus (which conveniently stopped just around the corner from the hotel). It was relatively simple and inexpensive, but it was the bumpiest journey you could ever imagine. How those buses don't fall apart I have no idea. I see they were built by Mercedes Benz, so they obviously opted for good build quality (can't say the same for the seats which were hard as nails).
We weren't exactly sure where the centre was, but as it happens we got off at pretty much the right spot and pottered off in the general direction of the Musem of Modern Art. We entered and walked up some steps into a fairly busy cafe/restaurant, artfully dodging the donation boxes (I don't mind donating, but I want to see the stuff first). We were standing about looking lost when a staff member came up to us and said 'unfortunately you've come on a bad day, they were in the middle of changing from one exhibition to another so the galleries were closed. Well, that's super awesome, perhaps you should put that on your fucking website, eh?
She invited us to sit down and look at a menu but as we'd only just got there we politely declined and pottered back up the road towards the Museum of Oxford. As luck would have it, they had an international art exhibition going on... result!
It probably took us about an hour to look at all the exhibits, which, as you would expect, ranged from the pretty good to the quite bad, with some particularly cheeky chancers asking for nigh on £2000 for a framed pencil drawing of an owl. I mean, seriously, come off it!
Lunch-time was fast approaching and as All Bar One couldn't provide anything normal, we opted to visit Pizza Hut for the first time in a long time and actually enjoyed a very decent Hawaiian with some less than crispy garlic bread.
After Pizza Hut we visited the covered market... I'm sure they'd like us to believe it's some really big deal, but it really wasn't. The highlight was the chocolate shop which had some Duc D'Or Bouchees, but only individually... at 85p each!
There was a watch shop offering some used Rolexes and even a TAG Heuer Carrera, but since he was also selling bullshit Daniel Wellington watches the guy was clearly a horological fuckwit and shouldn't be trusted to tell you the time.
After this we walked round to take a look at (Daniel) Radcliffe's Camera, which is a big old round building in between some other big old buildings. It was nice to look at, but there was a bizarrely dressed woman (think Rocky Horror picture show) having her photo taken which somewhat compromised it's alleged gravitas.
We headed back to All Bar One with the plan to buy ourselves a nice little cocktail, but it was mostly full and the seats that were available weren't too great. I don't want to sit with my feet in someone else's dinner crumbs while I'm drinking an over priced drink. But I did really want a cocktail. So we headed off in search of the Randolphe Hotel, where Rose said there was a 'cartoon bar' that served cocktails.
I must admit I hadn't given this much thought, but my idea of a 'cartoon bar' meant I half expected the barman to be dressed as Bugs Bunny or something, and even when we found the Randolphe and settled in the 'Morse Bar' to wait for the 'Cartoon Bar' to open it still didn't really click. Imagine my surprise then, when we finally gained access to the cocktail bar and realised that by cartoon bar they actually meant vintage cartoons from the 19th Century, and very stylish it was too!
I was so glad that All Bar One was over-run because this place was 100 times better. The cocktails are really expensive, but in my experience with cocktails it's usually the case that you get what you pay for and these cocktails were awesome. Rose had a Strawberry Mojito and and I had a mocktail called 'Virgin Islands' which was creamy and fruity. The barman also brought us some almonds that tasted off bacon, and some other nibbles and some olives (which we didn't eat).
If we went back to Oxford, we would definitely revisit the Cartoon Bar, it was far and away the best bit of our Oxford experience.
Afterwards we popped over the road to The Ashmolean which appeared to be offering free admission to an exhibition and American Modernism. As it happened, it wasn't. They were selling tickets for the exhibition in March, but it was free to go in and look at their stuff.
Truth be told, it was pretty weak. Like a crappy British Museum. It was like they got some statues, but they only got the ones with bits missing, like the torso... and the head was just a ball. So they kind of arranged it to show what it might look like, if it was there... but it wasn't so it looked shit.
We didn't stay too long.
We nipped in to Tesco but the queues were unbelievable so we dodged back out the in door and jumped on our bus back to the hotel. It was just as bumpy on the way back and we jumped out a little early as we saw a Londis and wanted to get a bottle of wine.
We'd booked a table in the restaurant and presented ourselves there at 7:15. Our waiter seemed vaguely disgusted that we didn't want bread rolls, but despite this he still allowed us to order two steak and ale pies. The pies were very nice, and we were very full, but Vlad insisted the cheesecake was very good so...
Vlad wasn't wrong, the cheesecake was indeed very good. It came in a glass and I really struggled to eat it. I got about 2/3rds of the way through, had a break and then ate a bit more before I gave up. When you thought about the size of the glass (big enough to fit a can of Coke in) you realised just how big this pudding was. Rose had sticky toffee pudding, which was a much more reasonable size but also very nice.
So that was one of the best cheesecakes I've ever had and one of the best cocktails I've ever had in the same day, result!
Now, I mentioned we had a 10% discount voucher for our executive room. Well, that's true, but we also had a 10% service charge, so that kind of negated the benefit of that, but having had such an awesome cheesecake I felt it improper to argue.
We headed down to the bar, but it was rather cold and there was bloody football on in there - great. Even around the corner in the 'snug' part. Marvellous. So we went back to our room and watched 'Synth Brittania at the BBC', which was moderately entertaining...
We both slept pretty well and the next morning we had a (slightly disappointing - isn't it always) breakfast, before heading off to Bicester Village.
