I haven't had internet for the last few days so that's why I'm so behind!
Day 5
We took a bus a few hours from the city to visit Blenheim Palace. It is one of the few private palaces in the country that are not owned by the royal family. We could only go in a small section of the palace because the upstairs is still lived in by the family. How cool would it be to live in a castle?! This is also the palace where Netflix filmed The Crown and Bridgerton.
The gardens were beautiful. The full garden walk is a couple hours long, we only did part of it. We walked along the lakeside and then cut behind the palace and went to the walled garden. They had a maze in the garden that we had an unspoken race through. Everyone timed themselves, Zoë and I got through in 11min and 20sec but Gwen beat our time by a minute!
After a few hours at the palace we got on the bus to head to our hotel for the night... it took about an hour and a half longer than it should because our bus driver missed quite a few turns...
We stayed in a manor house in Gloucester. It was the cutest little house. We had a three course meal served to us for dinner and then the rest of the evening was a nice break after the business of the city.
Day 6
The next morning we left about 9:00 and headed to Sudeley Castle. The gardens were smaller but the palace was prettier (in my opinion). We got there before the palace opened and wandered the gardens for a little while. It was so pretty. There was a field of sheep next to the palace and rows of hedges that you could walk inside of, they reminded us of the fourth Harry Potter when they are in the hedge maze.
Inside the palace was a family tapestry. It was so cool, it had all the family members and the family crest in it. There was a plaque there that said it would have taken 5-6 years to complete. How cool is that?! We were allowed to take any photos inside the palace so all I have is garden photos. I did get a book with pictures of the inside that I will be more than happy to show off when I get home. 😁
We had about two hours to spend there and then we got on the bus for what was supposed to be about three hours... it took almost five.. our bus driver is starting to drive us crazy haha. We have started to make a game of guessing how many hours longer our bus drives will take than they should.
Beautiful!