Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Catching up: Aberdeen

EDIT: Oops! So much for trying to catch up! I wrote most of the below post in Oxford, and now it's a week and a half later and I'm finishing it up in Sheffield.


I write this from the first floor of the Bodleian Library. It's my last day in Oxford, and I've looked at all of the books I'm able to on this research trip. (I had the misfortune of picking the one week this summer where a lot of the books on my list are being moved around and are therefore unavailable to researchers. Oops! I'll come back later this summer to see the last few on my list.) Husband is still working though--it's his first experience with microfilms! I can't help but laugh at his complaints; I had to deal with the same thing two years ago at the BL.

So that's why I'm sitting here on the floor outside the reading room (not on the comfy couches, because the little coffee tables aren't nearly high enough): biding time until the appointed time. In other words, at 4:30 we're going to go for one last afternoon tea at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin, before hitting up a grocery store and making our way to the train station. After a week and a half of research in Oxford, plus the earlier week in Scotland, we're ready to go home to Basingstoke. I myself am more than ready for a few days of not looking at sixteenth-century psalters. They're fascinating and I do still love my dissertation, but there's only so much time you can spend looking at different editions of the same book for days on end.

I left off this blog in Edinburgh. Sorry for the long delay in updating! Perhaps not unexpectedly, on research days in libraries, I find myself without much inclination to do more work on a computer in the evenings. Instead, I've been reading The Lord of the Rings, watching Doctor Who (up to season 2 of New Who; all hail David Tennant), and fully enjoying this summer of seeing my husband every day. But now the Oxford research trip is done, and while I don't have a lot of photographs or much to report, it's time to share a bit about our adventures since Edinburgh. Today, Aberdeen; in the next few days I'll line up posts about London, Oxford, and more about Basingstoke.

Aberdeen was a quick little trip. We arrived on Thursday night, I saw a few books at the University of Aberdeen on Friday, and we took our long (seven hours!) train to London on Saturday. Aberdeen isn't a touristy town. I was there for work, but Husband wasn't, and initially, I was worried that he wouldn't have much to do. However, I now have exceedingly fond memories of Aberdeen, because of the tea shop.

Ah, this tea shop! It's called Cup and it's glorious. I picked it for breakfast on Friday, and liked it so much that I insisted we return for lunch. It remains the single best restaurant I have enjoyed, this entire summer.

The best avocado toast I've ever, ever had. And Husband had black pudding for breakfast.

Afternoon tea for lunch! Giving me an opportunity to try a second offering from their extensive tea menu.

Then it was off to the university library to see a book and a manuscript.

Such an interesting building, architecturally

Beautiful stairs. I, however, didn't go up but down into the basement to find Special Collections.

I finished my library work by lunchtime, so we had the rest of the day to not be working. We took it easy, spending much of the afternoon at a coffee shop, and the evening at a pub to watch the first game of the Euros.

My truly ridiculous hot chocolate



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