London Day Two - click on title for slideshow of pictures

This morning we were up bright and early ready to be picked up for a Grayline tour into the Cotswolds countryside and a visit to Blenheim Palace. We had to leave before the hotel opened up breakfast, so we grabbed a quickie breakfast from the convenience store a block away and walked to Russell Square to eat it. Although it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day, the air was still chilly so we only lasted a few minutes while we ate breakfast on a park bench, then meandered over to the hotel where we were to be picked up. It was called the Russell Hotel and had all the opulence of the Ritz. Beautiful marble, tile mosaic floors, marble columns on which sat beautiful flowers, luxurious velvet drapery, gilded mirrors and plush chairs. It was just a meeting place, but I had to take pictures of the inside. Blenheim Palace was an hour away and I enjoyed getting out of the city to see some countryside. England has lush, rolling hills squared off by stone fences and prickly hedges. Our first view of Blenheim Palace was breathtaking. After winding through a small town, we turned a corner and a beautiful scene met our eyes. Grassy rolling fields were before us dotted with English oaks and a serene lake nestled in a small valley. A river emptied into the lake that gently meandered through a stone bridge that straddled Blenheim Palace on one side and the Marlborough Monument on the other. White swans were dotted here and there on the lake. We could hear the whole busload take a breath of wonderment. Historians have labeled this view as the ‘best of the country’ and I didn’t doubt it. The palace itself was imposing as a palace should be, an example of English Baroque architecture. It really wasn’t even a palace; the land was given to the 1st Duke of Marlborough for a decisive victory of his in Bavaria, and Queen Anne also gave monies to get a place built. Only dukes lived here, but it pretty much looked and smelled like a palace. This was famous for being the birthplace of Winston Churchill. We only had a short time to explore here, and ended up getting in the wrong line wasting precious time. Once we got in THAT tour of a multi-media presentation upstairs about the palace’s occupants, we rushed through it and tried to get in the downstairs tour of the ground floor. That also had a line and we knew we wouldn’t make it out to the bus on time if we waited around, so we turned around and somehow went underneath some ropes and ended up in the middle of that particular route and hurried through half of that as well. The grounds were spectacular I’m sure…we just didn’t have time to do them any justice. We saw one tiered garden off the café side and walked to the front gates that looked out to the bridge and monument. By that time we had to rush back to the bus, or else we would have explored more in depth. The map of the grounds looked very promising and beautiful. After the palace, we drove deep into the Cotswolds, the traditional English countryside where quaint thatched roof cottages were the norm. We stopped at three such towns, Bourton on the Water, Stow-on-the-Wold and Burford, where we stopped at an English pub and had lunch. We both had Steak & Ale pie, with “spotted dick” for dessert. The tour bus kind of chuckled when our guide announced the menu, but he had a deadpan face on and said, ‘No kidding.’ I guess ‘spotted dick’ is whatever they are serving for dessert, in our case being apple pie with cream. The Bourton on the Water village was the most beautiful with a lazy and wide stream meandering through Main Street. There were stone walking bridges over the river to conveniently get you over to the shopping, complete with waddling ducks here and there. The structures were really, really old in these towns and the roofs looked like they couldn’t keep water out if they tried. But after questioning this with my guide, he said that actually these roofs were pretty much a lifetime deal. Some looked like thatch, but on a closer examination, they were actually stone slabs overlapping each other. He said the roofs were so heavy that they had to brace up the walls to hold it up! And to have a thatched roof was kind of a two-edged sword. They were beautiful to look at, but they were also protected by English law. If you ever needed to replace your roof, you HAD to re-do it in thatch….and it was quite pricey, upwards of $50,000. It’s all done by hand. The weather this day was spectacular, chilly enough to throw our light jackets on, but beautiful, clear blue skies with fluffy white clouds. That night we took the Tube over to Waterloo station to see some distinguished graffiti in a nearby alley that was listed as a “must-see”. I saw some pictures of it on the net and it looked interesting, but there wasn’t much left of what I saw when we finally got there. The city gave full license to anyone to get as creative as they wanted down there as long as their art wasn’t graphic, racial, demeaning, etc. I took some pictures anyway, but it was mostly pictures of words. Wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.