What do you do when Google gives you two different answers...

You end up on the opposite end of town, and spend about £6 GBP on Bus Fares...

You also get to meet a bunch of really nice British people.

Check it out...



I am staying as a guest at St. Catherine's College, Oxford for this C.S. Lewis Conference, and today was a travel day for the attendees, this means that... I get a day off because there are no events to record on video.

Since I am not going to get another day off for the next week and a half, I decided to seize the moment and get some "evening shirts" and "evening trousers" cleaned at the Dry Cleaners. So I called up the closest cleaners to the city center and they wanted to charge almost £50 GBP ($87 US) to clean my 6 long sleve dress shirts and 3 pairs of slacks.

I knew it would be expensive, but that was absurd!!!

So I got on to google and looked around for another cleaners. I found a few dozen, so I got on my mobile and started to call around asking for price quotes. Most of them seemed to be the same, and then I found this one called Sophia's Laundry and Iron. Cool name, I figured, well, I'm in oxford so geting your cleaning done at the 'wise' place seems to fit. I called them up, and I asked how much it would cost. They told me it would be just over £22 GBP, so since that was more than half the price of the other shops I went for it.

As you can see from the map above, I was under the impression that this shop was only a 12 min walk from where I was staying! Even better, this shop was close and inexpensive! The only thing better would be if they could pick-up and deliver to me in the college.

So I started walking and I got to where the cleaners was supposed to be, and there was not a cleaners in sight.

I called them on my mobile phone, and not soon enough did I discover that there are two Cowley Roads in the Oxfordshire area, along with many other doubles and tripples, like temple street and temple square, and oxford st. in the town of littlemore and littlemore st. in the town of oxford.

Well, I called them and they told me how to get which bus, to get to another bus to then get close to where their shop was located. When I got off the first bus, these two wonderful ladies came in their company van and picked me up and took me back to their shop.

They were very kind to me indeed.

The story get's better, because I went to pay for cleaning and delivery back to the college, and I was £1.50 short, not to mention still needing about £3 for bus fare to get back to the city center for dinner.

I walked down two stores to a Post office/Convienience store and tried to get some cash from an ATM that wouldn't accept my American debit card, and I finally was able to exchange one of my travelers checks at the post office, which enabled me to strike up a conversation with Frank Adam and his wife who run that post office. We ended up exchanging our information and if I am ever in england again, I now have a new friend to call on!

Sweet! What and adventure. A friend of mine, who worked for me once said that even though she could get a better paying job elsewhere, she liked working for me, because as she said, "it was never boring, and always a new adventure."

I'm glad to see that it is still true, no matter where I am.