Blenheim Palace

Woodstock, England

As the title may suggest I visited Blenheim Palace today which is located next to the town of Woodstock. John Churchill was made Duke of Marlborough by defeating Napoleon and the french at the battle of Blenheim. That's how the english know it at least. It was fought on the Danube and I think they might have a different name for it there. Anyways he was given by the crown the land and money to build this palace. One cool thing is that this John had no surviving male heirs, so there was a special act of parliment passed so his daughter could inherit the title. And it is an amazing palace. It has lots of paintings of the dukes (they're now on their 11th) and tapistries and highly decorated ceilings and fancy furnature. All the things a good palace ought to have. It also has an exhibit on Winston Churchill, because he was born there. He was not destined to be a duke though because his father was the second son. But he was born there and I stood in his birth room. That makes two rooms famous men were born in three days.

The palace also has magnificient grounds. I did one of their walks which went past a temple to diana and a waterfall. Since that wasn't enough I went on another past the front of the palace. They have a flock of sheep grazing out on the grassy lawn of the palace...very interesting. There's also a secret garden with a sign pointing to it. Not so secret anymore, but lovely all the same.

Peter (margaret's special person) took Margaret and her mother and me to this lovely resteraunt called the boot for dinner. It has boots or shoes from lots of famous brits on the wall. I didn't know who any of them were though which was sad. It was the same way in the palace. An eight or so year old girl was looking at the paintings and identifying the historic people in them, and I had no idea who they were. Anyways dinner was really good. For dessert I had sticky banana pudding (cake) with hot fudge sauce which they tell me is typically brittish. I'm going to have to learn how to make it for all of you.