We're Painting the Roses Red

Every day we visit something that becomes my new favorite on our trip. As of today my new favorite building is Blenheim Palace (aka Blenim Palace). Queen Anne had it built for the Duke of Marlborough after he led the defeat of the Spanish in the 1700s. Therefore, the Palace is in the English Boroque style. The Marlborough family still owns Blenheim, and lives there, so when they're there the east wing is closed off for touring.

Once again, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but the gardens were amazing. We walked through the Rose Garden, and we came upon a patch of white rose bushes. Leslie mentioned that it reminded her of Alice in Wonderland when they were "painting the roses red." That song was stuck in my head the rest of the day.

We took a double decker bus to and from Blenheim Palace- it was awesome! We sat on the top, of course. :) It was a great view of Oxford from up there and we saw some very charming houses! Like the rest of London, the buildings are very tall and there's next to no yard; everything is very cramped together. But like I said, the houses were very charming.

We did have a pretty crazy experience in Oxford... we were all on the bus, looking down at the streets from the windows, and we saw a woman with her child on a leash. All of a sudden, She was glaring at us and I could see her lips forming all sorts of cuss words. I turned my back away from the window as soon as I realized she was shouting at us, but most everyone else kept looking. She was quite the sight. Apparently she started yelling "stop looking at my child!" well of course, we thought the whole thing was ridiculous. It was so ridiculous that we joked and laughed about it the rest of the way to Blenheim. But when we got there... Darrin (our professor) gave us a talking to. He told us how dangerous that could have been and how there are crazies out there and  how people are unfriendly in other countries. He warned us to be more cautious, and he basically scared us all enough that we were pretty quiet the rest of the day. I was pretty shaken. I'm just glad we learned our lesson this way, where we're all perfectly safe.

On that note, other than that it was a great day. The weather turned nice and sunny for once! And on our way home from Oxford, we stopped at Zizzi's, an Italian restaurant, for dinner. Leslie and I split a pizza and it was really good :) It definitely had a different taste to it than American pizza. The crust was very flat, and it had tomato sauce, mozzerella cheese, olive oil and basil leaves on it.

By the time we got home it was about 8:30- it was a looong day! But a good one :) I'll sleep well tonight!