Our first visitors

Last Thursday, my parents came to be the first people from home to visit us here in England. Unfortunately, that weekend was also the first with so much bad weather at once since we came here. But hey, we're Norwegian Vikings, we can take a little wind and rain. On Friday we went to Oxford city centre to do sightseeing and shopping. We went to se Christ Church college and cathedral, which was very nice. Appearantly, some scenes from Harry Potter was also taken here. Then we walked through the Covered market and to Mark's and Spencer. There, my father got himself a couple of new sweaters, before he and Tollef ran off to a pub, and left me and my mother to do a bit more shopping. The day was finished off with a decent lunch on The Blenheim pub before we went home.

On Saturday we went to Bath to see my cousin Arnstein, who studies there. On we left early and headed for Stonehenge to stop and see it on our way. It was a very windy but nice experience, though I did find it a bit expensive to be allowed to look at a bunch of big rocks... Just as we set off further towards Bath, the rain came pouring down and lasted most of the day. We picked up Arnstein from his nice house outside Bath, and went to the city centre. There the guys, Odin included, went to a pub, while my mother and I went to the Jane Austen centre. It was a very nice experience, and I learned a thing or two about Miss Austen that I didn't know from before. I also spend an amount of money in the shop there, buying myself some piano records, a new and authentic fan and a couple of books. After catching up with the beer-boys we went for shopping and lunch in the main centre of Bath. The food was good, even though we ended up right in front of a big screen that showed a very loud international rugby match. We had dessert on Shakeaway before we brought Arnstein home and headed back towards Oxford.

On Sunday, Tollef left for an Ubuntu Allhands conference in Dallas, US, so it was just my parents and I, and Odin of course, that went to see Denton house where I work. To everyone's pleasure we had blue skies and sun, and the place was shown at it's best. We saw the stables and my parents were guided through the house and the garden, before we had a nice cup of coffee. We decided to have lunch at the local pub before we went home, and came back to Oxford just in time to do a little shopping in Headington before we went back to the house.

My parents were going home on Monday morning, so I drove them to the bus before I went to work. It's been a very busy but likewise nice weekend!

Karianne