Monday, August 1, 2011

British palace: Churchill's garden

    Several weeks ago, by professor’s recommend, I went to Blenheim Palace which is owed by Churchill family since long time ago.
    Palace is a huge British style palace stands there for almost a thousand years. I finally have a look of British style gardens which I learned from architecture class. The size of the palace is amazing. The entrance of the palace is an open-view meadow which leads to the main gate of halls. It’s a long way and guest can have lots of fun just look around. The architecture itself is not very surprising, but the room decoration fully shows how rich Churchill family is. There are lots of treasures and art works in every single room. There is a Churchill museum that introduces Churchill’s whole life. Churchill surprised me that he was born in a wealthy family but still studied really hard and practiced himself a lot. He is the hero of Britain because of his braveness and dignity. He is also a really outstanding speaker who obtains more than 20,000 vocal vocabularies, which is rare.

    Blenheim Palace maintains lots of theme parks and gardens including Rose Garden, Italian Garden and Secret Garden. Those garden and lakes form a big area of quit and separate place for royal families to avoid noise and crowds. Nowadays, the palace provides people a elegant area for leisure time walking.

Han's adventure to Edinburgh Part 2

The second day in Scotland I woke up early to enjoy my Scottish full breakfast and start my tour in that fabulous city. The first place to see is Edinburgh Castle. The castle is owned by Queen Elisabeth but no longer be used by her. It built in a highest point in the city so the ancient governor can overtaken the whole city and look for enemy. The castle experienced a lot of wars and finally survived and become the property of England. But it originally belongs to Scottish royal family. It seems that Scottish people struggled hundreds of years to defend their country from England. But actually nowadays, even Scotland is considered as part of UK. Scottish people still have really strong country belonging and consider Scotland as a country.
         The castle itself is incredible and really spectacular. It maintains the oldest church in England which was owned by Queen Mary back time. In the museum in the castle, people have the honor to have a look of the “treasure of Scotland”. In the old time when England and Scotland had war, England tried to grab those three treasures from Scotland to show the power. However, even Scotland was in disadvantage at that time, Scottish people still tried to defend it with their lives. They sent the treasures out from castle the night before they crashed by England army. The treasure didn’t send back to the castle until Scotland and England came out with peace.
    I was so lucky because in the three days I stayed in Scotland Queen Elisabeth was there and would give a speech at that afternoon. I went to the ceremony just to see the elegant British queen. Besides that, I’m interested in the costume witch Scottish army wear during the ceremony. They wore tall hat which pretty much the same but a little bit wilder than English policeman wear. The most special thing is they wear Scottish skirt and socks. That’s the first time I see man wear skirt. However, I didn’t feel they are sissy or weird, on the other hand, that’s their feature and they are proud of that.
    Moreover, I used to think there is no British food in this world because English people always eat Indian food, Italian food or Chinese food. But In Scotland, they have their own cuisine. Their food mostly made by lamp or beef. And they like to have a little bit whisky when eating.

   Time in Scotland passed by extremely quickly. I like this peace land and the harry atmosphere there. It like the Share in the lord of the rings.