3rd January!

(Christina)

Today we just wanted to do some relaxing shopping in Oxford to take advantage of the New Year sales.  There were a few shops that we each particularly wanted to visit, so we arranged our walking tour around those stops.

My cold has developed into a bad cough, and now Charles is showing symptoms.  I hope that his cold will not be as severe as mine.  He was a bit grumpy today, which I totally understand - the first day of a cold feels like impending doom.

So the first place we wanted to go to was the Monocle shop - not a shop that sells monocles, but a shop run by the magazine/brand Monocle.  Charles loves reading Monocle, which is a magazine written for super rich, first-class flying, travelling, executive, arty writer types.  Charles is not all of those things, but he does like reading the magazine because it's interesting.  Anyhow they sell stylish things that are mostly collaborations with other expensive brands.  There were Porter/Monocle bags that Charles liked, but that were also all over 200 pounds.  We had a fun time looking but didn't buy anything.

Next stop was Vivienne Westwood!  There were two shops - one for men and one for women.  Charles spent a while in the Mens shop and LIsa and I went to the Ladies' shop.  They had lots of beautiful VW/Melissa shoes but NOT the Dragonball ones that I really like.  They were all on special too… The clothes were lovely, but all were designer prices - too much.  Anyhow it was super nice to visit such an iconic English brand.

Then it was lunch time!  We went to a "Pret a manger" which serves really fresh delicious sandwiches and stuff.  It was really nice!  I didn't feel like eating anything at all because my throat was all swollen but the food was SO NICE I ate almost all my sandwich.  Awesome!  

That was at about 3pm (late lunch) and it was getting overcast and horrid outside.  We walked around for a while and I spotted an Irregular Choice shoe shop - the brand Irregular Choice makes really awesome, sometimes bizarre shoes.  It was an exciting shop and I ended up buying a beautiful pair of shoes that were on special!

Then we went to the Lomography shop that was just round the corner - didn't buy anything but it was fun.

Lisa didn't buy anything all day, because yesterday while Charles and i were at my family's house, she bought TWO JACKETS.  She deliberately didn't go into any tempting shops today!

We went to a bookshop and Charles bought a science fiction book while Lisa and I browsed books about Madrid - she's going there tomorrow while we're going back to Sweden!  Then it was to Marks and Sparks to get some salads for dinner, and then home on the tube.  Since then we've just been watching telly and eating!

It's been a super lovely holiday!