Oxford Museum of Natural History

Last week, before both kids got sick again, we went into Oxford with Eric. While he had a meeting, I took the kids to the Oxford Museum of Natural History. It reminded us a lot of the Harvard Natural History Museum, and I suspect the design of the Harvard museum was modeled after the Oxford one, it having come first and all. The Oxford one is actually smaller in size than Harvard's but is packed with good stuff. Since it's free, I'm sure we'll go back many times.

This time around, the Oxford Dodo exhibit was a big hit with both kids. It's the very bird used as a model for Alice in Wonderland.

Justin found the story of the dodos' extinction fascinating. I didn't realize how quickly they went extinct once Europeans (and their dogs and livestock) arrived. Rebecca liked the Alice in Wonderland part of the story.

They also liked all the puffer fish skeletons, the gigantic dinosaur skeletons, and the bird exhibits. One of the cooler features of this particular museum was all the exhibits you could touch. They had several stuffed animals you could pet and a bunch of touchable rocks, minerals, and fossils.

Both kids loved tracing this perfect spiral over and over and I made sure they marveled appropriately at the perfection and symmetry of the natural world...

I hope this is as close as we ever get to a grizzly!

Check out that hunk of fools' gold!

Rebecca also enjoyed the various Family Trails they had for kids, which were basically scavenger hunts with different themes. She did the bird one this time. Here she is with her list of birds to find, handily attached to her dress by pen:

All in all, we all thought it was worth the trip. I'm pretty sure Justin liked the bus ride into the city better than the museum, but that's just because he loves buses! It's a good museum for kids--enough for them to do and see but not too big to feel overwhelming.

We were hungry by this time so we checked out the museum café, but it didn't look particularly appealing (or cheap) so we walked back to the center of town and found a French café that had quiche. We ate it outside on a bench underneath a clock that I'm pretty sure is famous because people kept coming by to take pictures of it. So I took one, too, just to fit in.

Those bells rang while we were there which was a nice background for our dinner. Also, note that the trash cans and telephone booth match fashionably.

In this picture, you can see bits of blue in the sky, but only a few bites of quiche later it started to hail/snow on us. All three times we've been into Oxford it has been really cold. This time I forgot hats and mittens, so Rebecca is convinced Oxford is a freezing city. I have tried to convince her that actually where we used to live was much colder, but she's not buying it!

Here they are bravely enjoying their quiche in the cold:

After eating, we met Eric at the Park and Ride bus, and rode to our car, and then drove home. Oxford has lots to do and see, and we all enjoy spending time there taking it all in, but we were all very happy to get back home to our little village with more pheasants and horses than cars and people.