Blenheim Palace: Winston and the Dukes of Malborough

Blenheim Palace

On Sunday I joined a number of my classmates on a trip out to Woodstock, a town about 20 minutes by bus from Oxford.  The town is nice enough, and we enjoyed a drink there later in the day, but the main draw is the fabulous Blenheim Palace, the home of the Dukes of Marlborough and the birthplace of Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the famed prime minister and orator who led Britain to victory in World War II.  The land around Woodstock, and the title of Duke of Marlborough, were granted to John Churchill (1650-1722), the 1st Duke, by Queen Anne (the last of the Stuart monarchs) (1702-14) after his victory at the Battle of Blenheim (1704) during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714).  The construction of Blenheim Palace began soon after at the direction of John Vanbrugh.  Built in the short lived English Baroque style (often defined as existing between 1666 and 1713), it is quite an impressive specimen and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.  It also boasts impressive gardens and a so-called “Pleasure Garden”, which as you can imagine ignites a good deal of snickering (in reality they’ve got nothing to do with the source of the snickering, but nonetheless it led to some fun jokes on at the garden’s expense).

Queen Pool, Blenheim Palace
Our View at Lunch

In any case, we took a bus from the main station in Oxford out to Blenheim.  It was a hot day, with the highs reaching well into the high 80’s Fahrenheit (30 Celsius or so).  The bus was somewhat crowded, but not impossibly so, and we arrived without incident.  As you walk down the main road into the grounds, you see the palace in the distance, majestic, with the vast, green fields splayed before you.  We’d planned a picnic, and the group went off to do that immediately.  A few of us wanted to grab some more food, so we headed up to one of the cafes, bought some extra food, and tried to find the rest of our group again.  We didn’t, and so ate on our own–sandwiches, fruit, almonds, lemonade, cider, and cookies.  It was quite a good assortment, and it was nice to sit under a tree by the Queen Pool, a lake, and see the view.

From Puebla to London in 72 Hours: Via Mexico City, Houston, D.C., and Copenhagen

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for sure. On Tuesday morning July 2, 2013, around 10:00 I left Puebla, Mexico, the bustling city of three million where my parents live, to head to Oxford, UK, for my month long course in human rights law. A two hour bus ride to Mexico City later, I was sitting in Terminal One, the old terminal, of the Benito Juarez International Airport. Two hours after getting on that plane, I landed in Houston’s George Bush International Airport, went through immigration, customs, rechecked my bag, and boarded the second plane of the day, to Washington D.C.’s Reagan National. By the time I finally got to bed around 1:00 am, I was pretty out of it. Wednesday I saw friends, did errands, went to my therapist, and repacked. Thursday afternoon I boarded a SuperShuttle out to Dulles International Airport, another one of D.C.’s three, to board my Scandinavian Airways flight to London, via Copenhagen, Denmark. I’d decided to give myself a longer layover there to get a short glimpse of the city. Having never been to Scandinavia, I wanted to have a chance to at least walk the streets and eat some food. I checked my bag all the way through to London, and with my small trusty backpack took the Copenhagen metro into the heart of the city. I’ve written about that already, but I wanted to just give a little recap of those days.

When I finally arrived at Heathrow Airport later that Friday (July 5), the immigration line took close to two hours, and then the Tube ride into the city (I got off at the Warwick Avenue station, close to Paddington) took an eternity. When I arrived, my friend had already left his apartment to stay with his parents in the country (I arrived hours later than expected). Someone in the street lent me their phone (they turned out to be Spaniards living in London), and I called my friend. I was able to meet him at Paddington to go out to the town of Newbury, close to where his family is. When I finally arrived there it was after 21:00. I met his family, we had dinner, and talked a lot until about midnight GMT, and then headed to bed to be able to wake up early to go to the Henley Royal Regatta, which was quite something. In short, it was rather hectic 72 hours, but it’s been incredibly worth it—seeing friends, going to events, being in Oxford studying human rights, and meeting new people has been amazing.

The idea of this post is to kind of make it an introduction to the rest of the entries I will put up while in Europe. One is in the planning called British Sports: Lions and Murray and Henley, Oh My! and others will be organized around different topics (the visit to Blenheim Palace, the course work, other trips, and of course the wonderful city of Oxford itself). I’m also going to write about other issues I deal with here. While it’s been a busy time, and the human rights law program keeps you on your toes, I think I can slip in a few posts here and there, although perhaps with less detail and links than my usual ones. Let’s see how it goes!