blenheim palace

friday was my first day off (yay hooray!) and i was very adventurous.  well, first i slept in until 11am, took a shower, and wrote some emails in my pajamas.  THEN i was adventurous.  i took a bus to blenheim palace, in a town called woodstock that is about 30 minutes from oxford.  blenheim palace is the largest private home in england, built in 1704 for the first duke of marlborough.  the 11th duke of marlborough lives there now, but much of the palace is available for visitors to tour, which i did.  winston churchill was born here - his mother went into labor while at a party hosted by the duke - and there is a lot of churchill memorabilia here, in addition to the bed where he was born.  interesting stuff.

the front of the house...but maybe "house" isn't exactly the right word... :

and the back:

the water terraces in the garden behind the house:

the palace is on 2,000 acres of land, and honestly, the grounds were much more interesting and fun to walk around than the palace was.  lots of gardens, a dammed river that has created a lake, and gorgeous views.  it didn't hurt that it was a BEAUTIFUL day - hot (relatively speaking) but breezy.  there are paths around the grounds that you can walk on, and i walked probably 3 miles around the grounds.  you know about my freakish love of roses, so the rose garden was one of my favorite spots:

a lot of it was VERY reminiscent of the wind in the willows - or at least what the scenes from that book look like in my mind:

after three hours or so of strolling around and discovering what was around the next corner and taking a million pictures and sweating a fair amount, i caught the bus back to oxford.  people, the british are PROMPT.  the bus schedule said that there was a bus from woodstock to oxford that left at 5:35 AND THE BUS ARRIVED AT EXACTLY 5:35.  it was ridiculous.  on my list of things the british do better than americans: make high-quality cheap sandwiches, drink beer at lunch time, queue up, and have public transportation run on time.