Oxford has always been one of my favourite cities. I was absolutely fascinated with it growing up and have had the great privilege of visiting both the city and the university more times than I can count, both for business and pleasure. Even though a trip there no longer feels novel, I still discover new things each time I visit.

This weekend I started off with a stroll around some of my favourite shops. First on the list was Scriptum – a very unique stationery shop selling a variety of vintage inspired leather-bound notebooks, wax seals, fountain pens and letter sets.

It reminds me of the stationary shops in Florence and is one of the only places outside of London where you can sample Santa Maria Novella perfumes – one of the oldest perfume brands in existence, dating from 1221. One of Santa Maria Novella’s signature perfumes, Acqua Della Regina, is still made to the same recipe as for Caterina de’ Medici on for her wedding! I use it daily but am building out my collection – I recommend buying their discovery set if you want to sample their core collection. (Fun fact – it’s the same brand of perfume Dickie buys for Marge in Netflix’s Ripley).

Right next to it is a wonderful independent coffee shop called the Missing Bean, which does excellent coffee and has a nice outdoor seating area facing Lincoln college.

Another excellent shop is Objects of Use which focuses on independent, sustainable, and often handmade items for the home (see my excellent use of the Oxford comma there).

I am a sucker for quality products made to last and came away with some lovely embroidered French linen napkins, a sheep’s wool duster, a Japanese face cloth, a linen glass cloth, a body scrubber, a mini nail brush and a table dustpan (very civilised).

After my stroll, I decided it was time to get a drink and sat in my favourite pub – the Turf Tavern. You would miss it if you blinked but it is down a small alleyway just as you go by the misnomered ‘Bridge of Sighs’.

I won’t give a history lesson here, but for the well-travelled readers who have been to Venice this bridge more closely resembles Rialto Bridge in style, but I do wonder if the misnomer is a sarcastic reference to the fact that students feel like prisoners (as the original Bridge of Sighs was aptly named for prisoners that saw their last view of the world before their sentence). I digress.

If you want a taste of history, there is no better place than the Ashmoleon museum. I had completely underestimated its size but you could easily spend a whole day here and still not see the entire collection. My favourite section was the Maiolica section – which combines my love for pottery, Italy and the renaissance!

You can’t leave without also seeing the Alfred Jewel – made for King Alfred himself, it is one of the most important discoveries of medieval England.