Oxford

We took a day trip to visit the city of Oxford. It was such an interesting city. We were expecting a typical college town, where there is a main campus for the college and the city around it. However, Oxford University is the city. Each college withing Oxford is a different building within the city and it's a little hard to tell what's part of the university and what's not.

The outside of Christ Church.

Christ Church.

This is the main dining room. It's what the one in Harry Potter was modeled after. You can only visit this during certain hours because it is still in use by the students in the college.

The head table.

The grand staircase in Christ Church.

The Christ Church courtyard. I think the dorms are along it.

The cathedral in Christ Church.

The organ.

The clock outside the Church.

The court yard of one of the colleges.

Part of the University's botanical garden.

The botanical garden.

The river Thames.

Oxford students have to wear their robes at all time. They are just like graduation robes.

I loved the details in the architecture here. Most buildings had gargoyles and faces on the buildings.

This is to show how big the doors are. That's a normal sized door in the middle.

Entrance to the library.

Library

Around the library, there were different entrances for different sections of the library with Latin above them.

I loved walking around and looking at all of the different buildings.



Our rental car this time was a stick. It took Gavin a bit to get used to driving a stick with his left hand. He kept stalling at first because he was putting it into third gear since he couldn't quite reach first gear. Once he got the hang of it, he did really well.
We had another beautiful sunset on the way home.
We loved visiting Oxford. It was such a nice, beautiful city/campus.

Tracy's Thoughts on Portugal.

I just wanted to add a couple of things that Gavin didn't mention in his blog posts on Portugal.

Gavin seemed to do really well with the language. I know he hasn't had many chances since his mission to speak it, and he was really worried that he wouldn't be able to speak well. From what I can tell and from what a couple of people have told me, Gavin was speaking fluently, like he never left.

Gavin was speaking so fluently that he actually started speaking to me in Portuguese. Then he would stare at me like I was an idiot for a minute before I would finally tell him to speak English. This happened more than Gavin would care to admit.

When he was writing his blog posts, he actually wrote parts of it in Portuguese.

One funny moment was when I wanted to buy a hand painted baking dish and the lady selling it didn't speak English and I didn't speak Portuguese. I would ask her a question, then look at Gavin to translate for me, then she would answer me, then look at Gavin to translate for her. Took a little bit, but we finally made it.

The bolos were amazing!

While walking around, we met a little gatinha (baby kitty). Her mom was sitting on a fence and we stopped to pet her. Her owner came out and started talking to us. Gavin told him that we thought she was really cute, but he said he had cuter ones. Then the baby kitty came out to say hi.

I was the one who told Gavin the little boy at the church was scamming us. He was ready to pay him. ;)

My favorite part was meeting the people from his mission and seeing how much they loved him. Even after ten years, they still remembered him and spoke of what a wonderful missionary he was. A couple of people even spoke about him during testimony meeting about how much the appreciated Elder Verde not just because he was a missionary, but because he showed an interest in them as people and their culture. They kept making references to him wanted to learn how to make a traditional soup recipe. Even those I met who had no interest in the church talked about how much they enjoyed talking with Gavin because he showed a genuine interest in them.

It was really neat to see a place so important to Gavin. It was such a beautiful place filled with wonderful people.

Portugal - O Final

Here is a shot of the city from our hotel during the day.

We headed over to church in the morning. We passed by the baixa again on our way. This is a view from the other side. This is the large cathedral which sits in a big open plaza. As missionaries, we would often do contacts here and would sing near the fountain and hand out pamphlets.

Church was great. It was sooo good to see all the members again, and plenty of new ones that I did not recognize. It was our testimony meeting and I was translating for Tracy the whole time. They are really strong members here. The church isn’t just something they do, their entire lives are based around the gospel. It was great to see the people doing so well. We stayed after to speak with a lot of them. Irmao Armando Do Vale was the ward mission leader when I was here. His nickname is “brincalhao” (The Joker) cuz he is never serious. He is constantly playing around. It was great to sit and talk with him for a while.

We were invited to lunch with a few of them but had to pass cuz we wanted to see a few things before we left. We headed a little further south to Leiria. It was one of my favorite castles. It is on a huge hill in the middle of the city.

Just chillin on the front porch

View Below

Having fun walking along the outer wall.

View of the interior castle.

View of an inner gathering place

Some of the ruins

It is a fun castle to walk around. The part below reminds me of Robin Hood (The Kevin Costner Version) There are a lot of trees and living areas where you could imagine life as it was back in those times.

Then we drove on over to Batalha. This place is enormous. It sticks out at you from the freeway.

Front View

Back Side

Side Shot. We about walked into the side door and there was this kid that stood in front of me and held out his hand. He pretended not to speak English or Portuguese. I asked “how much to get in?” He said “1 euro” So I about handed him 1 euro, and he said “each.” I scowled at him and walked away. It turns out he was just hanging out by the door asking people to pay him to enter the cathedral. We entered the front for FREE, and ended up coming out that side, and I glared at him again.

Interior – this is probably the tallest and cleanest I have ever seen. It was simple, and beautiful. It was not ornate with decoration and intricate work everywhere, just long smooth surfaces and clean lines. The entire structure was in the shape of a cross. The bottom left section of the lower case “t” had some cloisters and a small garden. We have come to find out that many of the cathedrals and churches we have been visiting have this same design. It is very pretty.

The stained-glass windows were simple, but beautiful.

We left there to head down to Fatima. I don’t even know where to begin to explain this one. Many years ago, Nossa Senhora de Fatima (Our Lady of Fatima), the Virgin Mary came down and visited these three young pastorinhos (field workers) and revealed unto them 3 secrets. Ever since, the area has been considered sacred ground. Many people come here to worship. They have since built a gigantic memorial of the event. It is a beautiful area. The weather sure helped.

In this image facing the other direction, you can see a large wooden artistic rendition of Christ on the cross. Some people come all the way here on their knees to show their faith as seen on the right hand side.

Many people gather by this large fire pit to light candles. They burn them as a symbol of the inner light they have. We spoke to someone there about the ritual, and she didn’t even know exactly why they do it, other than it was a tradition and an exercise of showing their faith.

We had to eventually leave Portugal, so we drove back up to Porto, and hung out by the Riverside. It was much more lively on Sunday evening. There were people everywhere, and street vendors and musicians. The weather had been slightly cloudy and sprinkling all day which made for a beautiful sunset. We wish we could have stayed longer and just relaxed by the river, but we needed to go home. Well, back to the hotel in Bristol, which has technically been deemed our new home.