I went from there over to the little park next to Christ Church Meadow I like so much, and read some of The Sicilian Vespers. I'm trying to knock it out before school starts back up. It's about the politics and history around the Mediterranean in the 13th and 14th centuries, so it's helping a lot with my Dante thesis at school. Not to mention it reads like a suspense/thriller novel, which is always welcome with history texts. I sat on the grass under a tree and read for about an hour and a half, and then headed back to Exeter to meet up with Blake.
We went out with two other people from the program, Daniella and Sean, and got paninis at a little sandwich shop for lunch. Once we had talked an eaten, Blake and I split up with our friends and caught a bus going to Blenheim Palace, the amazing birthplace and home of Winston Churchill.
When we pulled up to our stop, we saw 2 huge fields with hundreds of cars parked in each one. We found out later that there was a game exhibition going on today with events like hot-air balloon flying, dog shows, archery, fishing, and shooting ranges. Sir Winston would have loved it I'm sure, he was all about that kind of stuff. Blake and I walked past the cars pulling in to join the others and down the long road towards the palace. Even from a distance the place was overwhelming. It's a massive collection of buildings that rightly deserve to be called a palace, and the vast expansion of property they sit on is almost too much to take in during one visit. We got a ticket and went through the three, not one, but three huge and ornately decorated gates until getting to the main palace.
The two of us took pictures of the statues in the courtyard and the front of the building as well as the tall victory statue off in the distance to the front of the palace. If you were to stand at that monument, facing towards the palace where we were, and walk in a straight line, you would first come to the front entrance of the palace, pass through out the back, continue walking straight and eventually end up in the small church at Bladon, where Churchill and his family are buried. The entire walk probably wouldn't take more than 45 minutes.
Blake and I went through the left side of the palace, which is set up as a museum to Churchill's life. I was able to read hand-written notes he wrote to his father as a school child while listening to them play snippets of his most famous speeches in each room. The notes made me kind of sad, he started off almost every one with "My dear Papa, I'm so happy you wrote to me," or "My dear Papa, I'm so happy to be writing to you, I know how busy you are so you don't have a lot of time to read my letters," or something like it. I learned in the Churchill lecture last week he had a very cold, distant father, but Churchill idolized him anyway.
I saw pictures of the man from all through his life, letters from the Queen and world leaders to him, many of his books and possessions, and even a few of those landscape paintings I mentioned when writing about the lecture Dr. Jackson gave. They were very impressive. One of the stranger sights in the tour was walking through the room he was born in. They had the bed there, and above the bed was framed "Winston's curls, cut from his head when he was 5 years old." That would have sort of grossed me out, being framed hair and all, but when I was in Florence I saw two of Galileo's fingers and some of his teeth that had been preserved, which makes hair from the late 19th century not as jaw-dropping. I'm building an impressive resume as a creepy secular relic hunter though, which has always been a sort of back up professional dream of mine.
We walked through the rest of that side of the palace, and each room was more impressive than the next. There were paintings of the family for generations back, as well as amazing tapestries, maps, letters and furniture in each room that was all very interesting. I walked through the gorgeous dining room, with the beautifully set table and ceiling with a cathedral-like painting on it. While in there, I read that the family only uses it to eat on Christmas. Probably because the rest of the year its filled with tourists, many of whom don't speak English and might not understand "Please stop touching my food sirs and madams! You most certainly do not live here and this microwave ravioli is not rightly under your jurisdiction! No! I live miles from any city, it took me an hour to drive to the nearest Target to grocery shop I'll have you know!" That's how I imagine the Duke of Marlborough speaks.
Blake and I went from the photo-less indoor area into the back garden (garden of the year in 2008, no big deal), and took in the scenery. There is a little cafe and ice cream shop in the front of the garden. The actually fountains and plants that make it up are all neatly trimmed and well taken care of, as you could probably guess. There are three levels of garden area to walk in, and they all overlook to one side a big field, where today they were flying hot air balloons, and to the front a lake and forested area. We walked through, took pictures, and stopped at the cafe for a quick soda. From there we walked the lake-side path through the woods. We came across "the Cascade," which is a little man-made waterfall, and looked out over the lake. Then we stopped to watch a woman who was training her dog for the contest. We went from there through the rose garden and then to the Temple of Diana, where Churchill proposed to his wife.
Blake and I finished the walk back in the garden, and then walked out of the palace down to the victory monument before leaving. We wanted to see Bladon and his grave site, but the fair that day had blocked our path. We would have needed to take a bus if we wanted to go there, and we were both feeling that it was some serious nap-time, so we called it a successful end to the trip and got a bus back to Oxford.
I went back to my room and took a much-needed nap. Then I got up and went down to dinner, went on a long, aimless walk to a part of Oxford I haven't explored yet, read and revised my essays one final time, and ended my day at The Royal Oak with a Guinness and more Sicilian Vespers reading.
I'm really looking forward to my last week in Oxford, I can assure you I'll make it count. Here's to you, my loyal readers and friends, cheers.
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