Did we see Matthew Crawley????

If you're a Downton Abbey fan, you'll understand our excitement when Greg and I had a late lunch/tea at The Rose on the High Street here in Oxford, and this is who was sitting at the table next to us. Here is a picture I took:

And here is a picture we found on Google images:

http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/32200000/Radio-Times-scans-matthew-and-mary-32224119-960-720.jpg

Was that Dan Stevens, the actor who played Matthew Crawley? Squeeeeel!!!!!
Well, no, as it turns out, it wasn't. It was a really neat guy named Greg, who was there with his girlfriend Rebecca. American as it turns out. They have recently come back from 6 months in China (seriously, you meet the most interesting people here), both of them graduates of Georgetown U, visiting family in London, in Oxford just for the day, and we had a really fun chat. Apparently, he has been stopped alot for the "Matthew" factor. If he did his hair a bit different, he could really pull it off. The irony? He has never seen Downton Abbey himself . . . an impoverished life.

Well, we're kind of excited because tomorrow is a Big Deal here in England, it's May Day, May 1st, and festivities start at 6 am tomorrow morning here in Oxford with the choir of Magdelene College singing from the top of their very high Great Tower. I'm saying we'll get up for it, but as a few of you know, Greg and I are not, I repeat, NOT morning people. Pray that the Lord would give us a good kick in the pants so that we might rise with a sparkle in our eyes. After all, May 1st is also the day, 25 years ago, that Greg asked me to marry him on the banks of Lake Carnegie in Princeton, New Jersey. So sweet of Oxford to go to all this trouble to commemorate the event. . .

While no one thinks of England as the most technologically advanced culture in the world (that's reserved for Japan, China, perhaps Germany?), I think this is a pretty amazing piece of equipment:

This is in a public restroom here, and it's an all-in-one hand cleaning system. Stick your hands in that large opening there. Soap squirts onto your hands. Then water starts spraying down. Pull your hands out for a sec, put them back in, and the blower dryer starts up. Voila! Clean, dry hands. I imagine this is what it would be like on the Starship Enterprise. . .

Tomorrow: a report on May Day, and lots of catching up to do of pix around amazingly beautiful Oxford. But let me leave you with one more lovely view around town: