Blenheim Palace

I am so behind...AGAIN. Alright, so my big news from last week is that my sister visited!! Because of this we did a lot of traveling and sight seeing...this means a lot of blog posts I need to catch up on. I also must apologize for photography quality. My good camera is out of commission at the moment so my phone has had to pick up the slack.

First off was Blenheim Palace. Only an hour and a half bus ride away, this magnificent palace was the birth place of Winston Churchill! *insert oos and ahs* Yes, I actually stood in the room he was born in. There was inexplicably a pair of handcuffs on the bed.

It was Christmas time at the palace, which meant there was Christmas decorations up everywhere! The palace was HUGE! Everything you would expect from a genuine palace. The statues, the pillars, the walls covered in paintings. It was magnificent.


We were only allowed to tour a small part of the palace...a  very small part. One section of the first floor in fact. The rest has either been converted into other things or is still in use by the family. We started off taking a tour, but abandoned it after a while because the tour guide we had was an old man who talked quietly and talked for a very long time about every detail in the room.

The palace was true extravagance. The walls were decorated with real gold, and portraits were everywhere! In one of the dining rooms there were all these golden statues of animal heads that we found out later represented the Chinese zodiac. Not sure why they were there but they were cool.



There was one woman, however, who was featured in no less than 5 portraits and who's story caught my attention. She was Consuelo Vanderbilt. Yes, she was one of THOSE Vanderbilts. She was forced to marry the English Duke of Marlborough by her mother. The Duke married her because he was going bankrupt. They were only married seven years because they had an unhappy marriage before they got a divorce and she ran off to London to become a sufragete. She also held several positions of public office there before marrying the love of her life, a French man, and moving to France with him. They they managed to escape World War 2 and make it back to the US. Despite the fact she was only a Duchess for 7 years, she was the Duchess by far the most featured in the Palace, and the tour guides could not stop talking about her! One of her many portraits is below.

The library was a really long, grand hall, type room. It had a giant Christmas tree in the center and a magnificent pipe organ at the end.

There was also a woman dressed like an angel and painted gold. She was standing still like a statue and every once and a while would poke someone and scare them. Again, not sure why she was there, but it was funny to watch. I can't imagine how miserable that job had to be though. I hope she got paid well.

Once we got outside to the palace gardens we stopped to eat lunch. I thought it was really cool that I was actually having lunch in palace gardens. I am very historically conscious and I was thinking about how distant an idea that must have been for the majority of my ancestors throughout history. They probably never thought that they would go near a palace, let alone dine in one (although to be fair my nutella sandwich can hardly count as "dining") and there I was doing just that.

Out on the grounds Andrea and I frolicked through the field while my sister laughed at us. We also visited the "Secret Gardens". I don't know if these gardens were at one time a secret, but I don't think they count anymore because there were literally sign posts showing you how to get there and it was also on the map. Putting that aside they were pretty wonderful gardens, even taking into considering the time of year.

There was also this magnificent tree. From a distance it looked like one large tree surrounded by smaller ones. When you stepped inside the circle, however, you realized that the smaller trees were all roots of the large center one. I say smaller trees, but these trees were each several hundred years old in their own right. It was truly amazing.

Walking around the grounds was inspiring, and also made me wish I was rich enough to live in a place like this and go horse back riding through the fields every day. Alas that is never going to happen, but it is nice to dream though, right?