Today we ended the weekend with a day trip to Blenheim Palace and Oxford. We met at 8:40 am and took a two hour coach bus to Blenheim. Something about long drives with my music must lull me to sleep because I slept nearly the whole way there. When we arrived at Blenheim, we met a lovely man named Tim who was to be our tour guide for the day. Right away, we noticed that there are so many ducks on the palace grounds. We also found out that Ella loves ducks, a cute fun fact. As we approached the palace, we were passed by even more runners than we saw yesterday. Unbeknownst to us, there was a fun run on the palace grounds to help fundraise for the palace’s upkeep. As Tim informed us later on, Blenheim Palace does not receive any money from the government so they must raise their own through various fundraising efforts and activities. Tim also told us that the palace’s grounds cover two thousand acres, so what we saw today was only a small fraction of the property.
We started our tour with the house itself. Palace is absolutely the correct word to use for Blenheim as it is massive, complete with walls, towers, gardens, and even a chapel. The architect for Blenheim palace was Sir John Vanbrugh. He was hired by John Churchill, the man the estate was gifted to by Queen Anne, and had a flare for the dramatics. However, it was well reported that he tended to butt heads with the lady of the house, John Chuchill’s wife: Sarah Churchill. Although Blenheim was gifted to John because of his victories over the French, a part of the gift had to do with the fact that Queen Anne and Sarah Churchill were quite close. As a result, Sarah had a lot more say in the construction of Blenheim. The disagreements between Sarah and Vanbrugh eventually resulted in Vanbrugh being banned from the estate and he died before construction finished, so he never got to see his final masterpiece. As we toured through the house we moved from opulent room to opulent room, not a corner of a single room was left undecorated.
When we finally finished touring the house, we were given about an hour to tour the rest of the grounds by ourselves. Given the grounds spanned two thousand acres, we knew we would not be able to cover the entire property, probably not even if we’d had a full day to do so. I first went to the chapel, which had a beautiful marble carving as its centerpiece. I then wandered through the stables where I found that even the horses lived in luxury. Next I went to the formal garden, which was full of statues and overlooked the lake. I then joined back up with a group to find the secret garden. After poking around the secret garden, we rushed to the gift shop to buy souvenir. I bought two postcards to add to my collection.
We soon got back on the bus and travelled to Oxford. Oxford is the oldest university in the UK and is respected greatly by the world. Oxford is made of many smaller colleges, which have their own student population and are self-governing. I was surprised by this system and also the fact that very few buildings actually belong to Oxford as a whole, most belong to the colleges. The weather was lovely as we toured through Oxford and the area was just beautiful. I could have spent many more hours in Oxford. Right before we left, I bought a sweatshirt and another postcard. We then got back on the bus and I promptly fell asleep.
