Well, I have a new favorite museum type place in London: the National Portrait Gallery. It's really not as boring as it sounds. The museum, the building which is art itself, contains painted portraits from queens and kings from hundreds of years ago to photographs of today's royalty...both real and celebrity. The oil portraits are cool because so many spectacular artists do a fantastic job of really making the oil paintings look real. I love the photographs because good photographers can really capture the essence of a person and reproduce them on a sheet of paper. I didn't get through the whole museum, but that just means I get to go back. Plus, there is a new Andy Warhol exhibit that is going to open next week that I want to see. (You're not supposed to take pictures in the gallery, but I got this one before they yelled at me. I like it b/c you can see Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Charles, and me all in one shot. Who knew that would ever happen!?)The museum was yesterday, and today was a day trip with the Tulsa program to
Oxford and Blenheim Palace. 
We stopped at Oxford first and toured one of the 36 (I think) colleges: Christ's Church. I've visited Oxford before, and ironically enough, Christ's Church. The last time I was there, it was before the Harry Potter movies came out, but after I had read the first couple of books. The way the dining hall was set up made me imagine that if Hogwarts was a real place, that's what it would look like. Come to find out, the sorting hat scenes from the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movie were actually filled in that room. :) After walking briefly through the college, we had some time for lunch. I have a minor obsession with C.S. Lewis and while he was a professor at oxford, he and J.R.R. Tolkien and several others met at a pub called "The Eagle and Child" to philosophize and discuss things. Because of this minor obsession, we had to go there. :) It ended up being cheap enough and quiet enough where we got to eat there as well. It was lots of fun.Our last stop of the day was to Blenheim Palace. This is the only palace that doesn't/ didn't originally belong to
a Queen or King of England (no one other than the royal family is allowed to have palaces, but they made an exception for this one). It was given to the Duke of Marlborough (formerly John C
hurchill) in the early 1700s and has been in his family ever since. Today we learned that Winston Churchill's uncle and cousin were Dukes in this line. Princess Diana is also a member of the Churchill line. (Someone Churchill somewhere married a Spencer from which Diana came). I've seen quite a few palaces since I"ve been here, so I wasn't all that excited about going to this one, but I was proven wrong. It is a spectacular palace with even more spectacular gardens....a great end to a great day. (P.S. that's my new coat!!)
