We went straight from Windsor to Kensington Palace. I included the map so to show where everything is. If you look in the upper left hand side of the map you can see Bayswater with a bunch of red dots showing tube stations. That's where our hotel was. In the lower right hand side is where you get closer to Buckingham Palace and the museums. In case you can't tell, Hyde Park is huge. Trivia fact: it was once kept as the hunting grounds for King Henry VIII before he turned it into a public park.
We walked through Hyde Park to get to Kensington Palace. The paths are really wide which made it nice for bikers and walkers. You can rent bikes there for $2/24 hours and Ben and I were going to do it to explore all of Hyde Park until I hurt my knee. Oh well. We got to see some of it and it was beautiful.
I apologize in advance for all the plant pictures I'm about to post. I looooove flowers and landscaping and England is famous for its gardens so you'll have to bear with me.
Cool fact: almost no dogs walk on leashes in England -- even in the busy urban areas. Dogs are just trained to walk by their owners. It was bizarre!
The entrance to Kensington Palace
Also, I should mention that Ben and I completely embraced this trip by using all the proper British words, even if we were just talking to each other. So we never looked for an elevator, we always looked for a lift, etc. It made the trip so much more fun and I want to use so many of these words forever.
This was placed over the fireplace. I didn't pay attention to it at first until the guide in the room mentioned it was a weather vane so that the king could check what weather conditions his naval ships were facing.
There were lots of biblical, mythological, and Roman stories painted on different ceilings.
The view out of the Queen's sitting room.
One of the many tapestries.
This and the statue of Princess Charlotte really brought me back to reality to remind me of how blessed I am.
There was a Princess Diana fashion exhibit with several beautiful gowns. This was my favorite and the one I recognized the most. P.S. She was a skinny lady!
After we finished touring the palace we sat in the gardens and split this raspberry tart. I think we bought four of these on that trip because they were our absolute favorite. A crispy crust, layer of cake, thick layer of custard, and then of course raspberries. This is #1 on our list of foods we need to learn to make.
It was fairly chilly there for the first few days of our trip even though it was May, and I'm so grateful we were there when everything was green and in bloom, despite the temperature.
When we first arrived at Kensington it was late afternoon and so everyone was sitting outside having tea. It was a very English experience to see everyone drinking their tea while buttering their scones and eating Victoria sponges.
Queen Victoria
No comments:
Post a Comment