Oxford Malmaison

Well, I did end up making it back to the UK, although sadly only for a couple weeks to visit Ed. We originally had all these plans to go to places like Bath and Exeter, and to visit some universities that I will be applying to later this year. However, British weather being what it is, we decided to just stick to visiting the schools and then going to London a couple times to see some museums. We're pretty terrible sometimes, though, so in the end all we made it to was Oxford for a couple days and  spontaneously, Prague, and the rest of the time we were just kicking it around Brighton. But our two trips were good in any case.

In Oxford we stayed at a boutique hotel and managed to get a slightly lower than normal price, because we booked the day before we went. We chose the Malmaison Hotel, which used to be a castle, then it was a prison, and now it's a castley, prison-themed hotel, with the rest of the castle complex being a variety of restaurants, and some protected buildings, as well.

Here's the walk up to the Malmaison entrance.

Followed by the entrance.

This is to the left of the main door. The little tunnel leads to a courtyard with a bunch of restaurants.

This is further to the left, but I don't think this building is part of the hotel.

This is to the right of the entrance. I think that used to be where the warden lived? Or was it the mayor? There was a plaque.

 This is a night shot, but beyond that last tower lies an extension, which has an expensive-looking restaurant.

 After going past the main lobby, you get the an area where they have Cell Rooms. Here's apparently the classic shot of that corridor, which has made it to a lot of hotel review sites.

Then you have to exit the building into a courtyard, which is probably a nice place to sit in the "summer." This is the back of the main building.

 With Ed photobombing.

We stayed in the House of Corrections, which is this building. It's funny because knowing that this is a castle and it had been converted to a prison before becoming a hotel makes the sight of this building charming. If it were just the outside of a hotel, the guests would be pretty pissed about it.

They clearly added an annex to connect the two buildings, or they rebuilt this part. You can see the difference. I wonder why they did it like that.

So here is the standard House of Corrections Room. It's pretty masculine, I noted. It's also very dark, but there were plenty of reading lights and such, so it wasn't a problem.

Here's the carpet.

I liked this place because they gave us a good variety of drinks for free, not just plain coffee and Lipton tea. They had several kinds of teas, coffee, and hot chocolate powder, so I was able to make my mocha each day. It's the little things.

The bathroom was also cool, with an extra long tub, good for tall people. I didn't like the overhead shower, but whatever.

I burnt myself a couple times on the towel warmers. I don't approve of those things.

They had this whole schtick going on their website, on the toiletries, and on any other thing that could have text on it. It was pretty over the top. I think the biggest problem was that it was inconsistent. Sometimes they were playing on the notion of the prison, like by referring to the rooms previously being on the spartan side, but they've now turned over a new life. Others times, they played with the idea of "naughtiness" by daring you to take the toiletries home or with the "messy" room sign, but then other times it was more like just being rude, like "I want to be alone." I think they would have been less annoying by first reducing the schtick and second by making it all about prison--e.g. using the idea of solitary confinement instead of what they have below. Jeez.

Anyway, the breakfast was expensive, but it ended up being really good. They had a big table of typical continental stuff set up, but you could also order a hot meal from the menu for the same price. I was all about it. Ed got the Full English, which I wouldn't normally take a picture of, except it has black pudding in it. I never got to see black pudding back when I was living in Brighton, so I was excited to see it this time. Of course, it being called black pudding, and Ed describing it as being made of blood, I'm picturing it as some Klingon bowl of goop with like pig part trying to crawl out of it. But British people don't really know what pudding is. It can be fucking ANYTHING. As it turns out, in this case it's just a dense sausage patty. Not what I was expecting. You can see it in the middle there.

 

Just to illustrate the pudding point, here are some photos.

Pudding:

Pudding:

Pudding:

Pudding:

Pudding:

Get a GRIP, people.

Anyway, that was a tangent, but an important one. My final picture is of my waffle breakfast, not because waffles are particularly unusual, but because sometime a couple waffles and a banana just look a bit like cock 'n' balls. HA.

 

I didn't take any other comprehensive hotel photo series on this vacation, so don't worry about it if you're wondering why I always post really boring entries about where I'm staying instead of what I'm doing. I like hotels.