Oxford

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Oxford is a very quaint (UST = old, old, OLD) town that was founded in the 700s and is home to the oldest, and one of the two most famous, Universities in the English speaking world. You guessed it, it is 'Oxford' university. (the other is Cambridge which is in .... you guessed it, Cambridge) The university is comprised of 40 colleges and is every where you look in town. There are 18,000 students. But since it has been built over the course of 800 years, the only consistency between the buildings is they are all very, very quaint.
There are some neat looking buildings on the campus. The round building is called the Radcliffe Camera to confuse we Americans, because it isn't actually a camera at all. It is a library. I saw it from the tour bus but didn't get a picture, so I stole one off the web.
The building is a sample of the architectural style of many of the buildings on the campus, but as I noted, there are many really old buildings that don't resemble any of the rest of the campus.
The spire sits in the town centre (UST = center) and honors 'The Three Martyrs." (you are probably thinking, "if I remember my history correctly, there were many more than three martyrs") These three particular martyrs had the misfortune of being Protestant back in the 1500s when it wasn't popular and were burned to death for their troubles. The cool thing about this spire is that Oxford students, being the rascals students can be, tell inquisitive tourists that the spire is the top of a cathedral that sank below street level. They then direct them to some stairs across the street to "see the rest of the cathedral." The stairs lead to public toilets.
The lantern you see was the actual lantern Guy Fawkes used in his attempt to blow up Parliament back in the 1500s. Guy was Catholic and like the guys who torched the martyrs, not too tolerant of Protestants. To his dismay, England at that time was ruled by Protestants. So he and his mates (UST = co-conspirators) decided to blow up the Protestant leadership, King James and Parliament, on November 5, 1605. They caught him before he could pull it off, but they've been celebrating 'Guy Fawkes Day' (aka 'Bonfire Day') every November 5 since.
The other picture is a nice Rodin statue from the Ashmolean museum. Bad name, nice museum.