It is crazy to believe that we are already half way through our trip! It has really flown by. While the days have been long, I have definitely made memories that I will never forget.
The day started early as we were catching a bus to Oxford. Apparently, our group has terrible luck when it comes to renting buses because we had to wait about an hour for the bus to come again! The difference this time was that there was a time confusion rather than a location confusion! Nonetheless we made our way to Blenheim Palace and Oxford University. We also got to meet up again with our amazing tour guide Tim who took us through Blenheim Palace and Oxford University.
Blenheim Palace was gifted by Queen Anne to the Duke of Marlborough after his victory in the battle of Blenheim. It is also the place Winston Churchill was born. The Palace is now owned by the twelfth Duke of Marlborough. His story is quite interesting because he struggled with drug addiction but was able to clean himself up prior to inheriting the property. I think this is interesting because so many people struggle with drug addiction, and I think his story shows that individuals of ‘royal’ status are people too with real people problems.
This Place is huge! It lays on about 20,000 acres of land and it is truly beautiful. Due to the bus mishap, we had limited time to spend at Blenheim Palace, but we made the most of it. The first thing we did was tour the state rooms. These rooms are amazing! Each room is color coordinated (similar to how the White House does it) and is filled with the grandest painting and furniture. Some of these painting took up the whole wall and the attention to detail was insane! Personally, I would have loved to be a guest at that palace! After touring the state rooms, we moved onto walking around the gardens. These gardens are absolutely amazing! The secret garden, in particular, was beautiful. You enter through a gate (and it did take a moment for us to figure out how to open it!) and there are just paths of trees and flowers with a stream running throughout. We even found a gazebo and obviously had to take some cute photos there!
We then went to Oxford University. I feel like everybody knows the name Oxford University, especially because it is frequently referred to in movies and TV shows. When I think of Oxford University I think of a prestigious school that is very hard to get into. While these are true, Oxford has such a rich history. We got to tour Oxford, New College which is one of the oldest buildings. The architecture is beautiful, and it reminded me of an old historic town (which I guess it is). We got to see the chapel which was very pretty inside. I also discovered that Oxford New College has their own bible which I thought was a unique touch. We also got to see the dining hall and it was very formal. So absolutely nothing like the dining hall at the University of Pittsburgh! Walking around Oxford definitely gave me old historic town vibes and I loved how much greenery there was. It is a pretty heavily populated area which surprised me a little because I thought it would be more like a college town. But after spending the afternoon there I can understand why Oxford attracts so many people.
That’s it for today. I’m excited to go to Black Country tomorrow!