Day 18 Blenheim Palace - Oxford- Milton Keynes

After being fed fantastically last night by Matt- creamy carnonara and Michelles lemon and raspberyy tart, we went back to the hotel and had a great sleep. Tidied up this morning and drove towards Oxford where we saw the signs for Blenheim Palace. Quite a few english friends had said this was worth visiting, so we did a quick u-turn and in.

The statues and fountains in the gardens

It is a majestic and huge estate owned by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough and was worth the hefty 20 quid each to enter. They have maintained it beautifully and the grounds/gardens are fantastic even for this non gardener!

This room had huge tapistries everywhere.

He's got the spaz shot of the the day again!




















We carried on to Oxford, which has pretty bad roading in and out of the city- very slow with heaps of queues. We went right into the central part and checked out a couple of hotels but they are all extrememly expensive, so we went to a (very expensive!) car park, then wandered around the high street area.

There are students everywhere, there seems to be an unspoken give way to them all walking on the streets when the lights are green too but hey- when in Oxford.....Had a good look round but not really us, so we decided we would move on to Milton Keynes for the night. The gps had a sudden paralytic event and went dead but Graeme gave it cpr and it came back to life thank god- makes you realise what a difference it makes! Oxford is the first town it has really got all confused and wrong- was leading us down pedestrian streets and no exits and telling us to turn right etc!@$@ However once we got out, it came right.

We have got in the the habit of checking the night before on trip advisor then go and have a look at the rooms at each hotel. This one today, the Doubletree by Hilton had a twist I didnt tell Graseme about until he cmae into the room- It has a football stadium Inside it! Its the Milton Keynes Dons homeground and we could see they were practising out our bedroom window! It is the player of the year awards tonight so we were lucky to get a room and one looking into the stadium. Had a drink in the bar then a lovely meal in their very upmarket looking restaurant. We are sleeping really well each night, probably to do with all the travel each day :-)