Oxford has a Castle/Prison!

Our first full day in Oxford was filled with seeing all sorts of things! To start off the day we went to Oxford Castle Unlocked which I highly recommend to anyone who can do stairs and has time in their day while they are in Oxford. It was a 12th Century castle which in the 13th Century became a prison for rowdy students. Over time the prison expanded and the decreased in size though out its history. At one point the prison was so terrible that crime actually went down because people didn't want to go there. The prison was finally closed in 1996. Yes, 1996, I did type that right and you read it right. When you go to the castle/prison you are given a tour by a guide who is in character as a real person who used to be a prisoner at the prison. I don't remember of our tour guide's person, but he was a highway robber from the 17th Century. He did escape from the prison along with two other people. How they escaped was that one of them sawed though the locks in the sickbay. The female of them then pretended to be sick and broke the other two men out by picking the locks. They then made a whole in the wall and climbed to freedom using their bedsheets which were tied together. Once they were out the woman was promptly captured. The two men were also eventually captured and returned to the prison. Our tour guide kept saying that he was the only person to successfully escape from the prison. Later on we crossed paths with another tour. That tour guide said something about how horrible the prison had been and our guide responded with "Yes, but I escaped! The only one to do so!" The other man replied, "I also escaped!" To which our tour guide responded to without hesitating, "We were the only ones to escape!" They were from different time periods, so they hadn't escaped together and the exchange was quite funny! After going around the castle-prison we climbed up the motte, a man made hill outside were a tour would have once stood at the top.

 A fair amount of the old prison has been turned into an area with a bunch of restaurants. I liked how this one was called Malmaison! Although, I think it would feel a little odd to eat supper in a place where prisoners used to be mistreated and tortured, but maybe that's just me!

  The view from the top of the square tower which is the oldest tower at the prison.

A prisoners cell

At the top of the motte there was a set of stairs leading down

At the bottom of the stairs there was a well

Me sneezing!

Following that we went on a hop-on hop-off bus tour. It was very nice just to see the city and not have to worry about exactly where you were.  Oxford is so lovely! We sat on the top of the double-deckered bus and it gave me a new view of the buildings. There is much more to see higher up on the buildings, like statues and carvings which are hard to see from the ground.

After that there was still time left so we went to the Ashmolean Museum. It's pretty big! We weren't able to go though the whole thing because there is so much stuff. I plan on going back later to get a closer look. We went through the Greek part, the Egyptian galleries, the British gallery, the special exhibit on embroidery and some of the Japanese galleries. We also went for tea time at the restaurant at the museum which was loads of fun! We had a pot of tea each and mini scones, cake and sandwiches!

Sorry it was such a big blog post! I'm going to try to make collages to be able to put more pictures up better!