No Place Like London: Part II
On our second day in London (our first full, normal day), the Tube strike hit hard. Bus stops were packed, the trains were packed. We managed to make it places, but it took a lot longer. We took a 45 min bus to Westminster, walked to Waterloo station, and took a train to Hampton Court to see the palace.
They cannot stress this enough!
We grabbed lunch when we arrived and then spent 5 hours at the palace, still not seeing everything we wanted to, but oh my goodness it was beautiful.
Entrance
I should've been jumping around because I was really excited :)
Hampton Court Palace was originally built in the 14th century, refurbished by Cardinal Wolsey (chief minister to King Henry VIII) in the early 1500's and then "given" to Henry VIII in the mid 1500's. Later, William & Mary lived there and refurbished again, then in the 1700's, George II lived there and further refurbished, although his changes stopped midway due to various factors. That means the castle is half Tudor and half Georgian, which are totally different styles as you'll see in the pictures.
Being that I love studying Tudor history, I was thrilled to be echoing the footsteps of Henry VIII and other popular historical figures.
The first thing we did was the garden maze, created in the late 1600's. We definitely got turned around doing it :)
Come hither, she says, I will lead you out...
Dude, I totally know where I'm going...no dead ends for me!
Yay!
The formal gardens
Happy rose petal lady
Hampton court Palace, Tudor side
Inside we toured the kitchens of Henry VIII and heard about how food was prepared for countless members of court. The scale of these rooms was way more than can be seen from pictures. They were GIGANTOR.
Meat pies, mmm
Golden ceiling of a great room
Enormous tapestries that covered the enormous walls...Regents could raise armies on what these tapestries cost, spun with golden thread (can you see it glowing?)
We went through an exhibition on the young Henry VIII (kinda like The Tudors on Showtime). It was disappointing though as it really just glossed over everything and focused more on the multimedia presentation
But then you exit the castle to this, sigh
And if I were a duck, I would certainly choose to live here (check out the fuzzy babies on the right)
This is a picture of the Georgian side...very different
After the Palace, it took a while to get back to our part of town. We decided to go into Soho for shopping and dinner in the evening. Ate at Pizza Express and had an incredible caramelized onion, pear, goat cheese, and arugula pizza. YUM. I had eaten one slice with my hands when S pointed out that EVERYONE in the restaurant was eating it with a fork and knife. When in Rome... so I picked up my fork and knife and found it very difficult to eat it that way as S shook her head at me and continued to eat it with her hands :P
That about ends day 2.