Oxford, the United Kingdom

Throughout my Erasmus year, I made the most of it by visiting numerous cities in the country I was on placement in, the United Kingdom. I'm going to talk about Oxford in this post.

Oxford is a city in southeast England, in the county of Oxfordshire. It's quite a small place, it doesn't have more than 200, 000 inhabitants. Despite that, it has one of the most diverse populations (ethnically speaking) in the whole of the United Kingdom. This is essential due to the prestigious University of Oxford, which welcomes students from all over the world.

Its university is the oldest in the Anglo-Saxon world. They don't know the exact date it was founded on, but people guess that it's about a thousand years old. You can visit a lot of university's "colleges" and their buildings are really worth seeing.

Christ Church is maybe the most emblematic and most visited college in the city, it was built in the 16th century. This college inspired some of the sets for Hogwarts, the school of magic where all of Harry Potter's adventures take place, you can even visit the room that inspired the Great Hall.

On top of all that, Christ Church has other beautiful structures within its walls. The most iconic being the indoor patio, known as the Tom Quad:

You can also see the Cathedral inside this college, too, it has elements in the typical English Gothic style and its choir is a standout.

Aside from the colleges, the city of Oxford has a special kind of very charm. It's common to find different music groups throughout the main streets of the city centre, doing what in English they call, "busking", that is, playing music in the street, trying to get people to know them and their music and get earn some money from the tourists. Many of these groups perform at night in the city's pubs.

If you visit Oxford, you pretty much have to go, what is known here as, "punting", which basically consists of renting a little row bow and going down the Cherwell river. You can admire a lot of the city's iconic bridges from the river.

Other things you can visit in the city (although I didn't get the chance to, I didn't have enough time) include the University of Oxford Library, Oxford Castle, the botanic garden or the many museums throughout the city.

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