In case you didn’t know, C.S Lewis spent a good chunk of his life here in Oxford.

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I like C.S. Lewis, but I wasn’t prepared for some of the traveling advice that we got when we told people that we’d be living here for a few months.  Suddenly, people started practically threatening us if we had the audacity to live in Oxford without visiting certain C.S. Lewis sites, like “The Eagle and Child” pub.  Chalk it up to that little rebellious streak in me, but the more that people started talking up “The Eagle and Child”, the less interested I was in going.  I mean really, how interesting could a pub be?  I wasn’t sure if we’d make a visit or not.

Well, as it so happens, we’ve visited “The Eagle and Child”.  It wasn’t planned, but it had started to rain on my way to show Chris’ office to my MIL and SIL, J and N.  Rather than walking all the way to his office, we rang him and asked if he wanted to meet for lunch.  He asked where we were planning to eat and there, just ahead, was “The Eagle and Child”.

Lunch = sorted.

So, we headed into the pub.  I have to admit that it was a nice pub with a great atmosphere.

It was pretty neat to think that part of it (much renovation has been done) was used by “The Inklings”, a writing group of which C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, among others, were members.  It seems that Joe wasn’t that impressed, though.

Chris and his sister went up to the front to order our meals.  I tagged along to take obligatory tourist-type photographs (and surreptitiously insure that Chris didn’t forget about my order, ahem, as he has done in the past).

Can you tell that Chris was posing here just to humor me?  It didn’t help that the people sitting a mere inches away were egging him on and telling him to ham it up for the camera.

We explored the back room as well and found this pretty cool little doorway (that was unfortunately (a) locked and (b) not a wardrobe)…

Did I ever wear anything other than my big, poofy hooded sweatshirt and raincoat?!

Yes, that’s a doorway to Narnia.  Pretty fun 🙂

I finished taking photos and we all sat down to dig into our meals.  Except that when my meal arrived, I noticed that there was a bug sitting atop the highest leaf of my salad.  It was a cute bug, I’ll give it that, a lovely shade of green and staring at me with long, waggling antennae, but it still put me off eating there.  The waitress was suitably embarrassed, gave me my drink for free, and offered me a free meal, but seeing a bug on my plate was it for me – no more eating at “The Eagle and Child”, cool atmosphere or not!