Hampton Court Palace

I am now officially on holidays as I have completely lost track of what day and date it is. If it weren't for these posts I would have no way of remembering where we were a week ago, let alone what we were doing. Imagine how bad it will be after 16 weeks of this! While this blog may serve as an update for family and friends back home, I'm happy to go to the extra effort of recording our adventures so one day we can look back and reminisce.

Yesterday saw us spend a whole day exploring Hampton Court Palace. And we could easily have spent more time there. It is located south west of London, and only a short drive from Horley, which meant refreshingly less tourists. It was so much more enjoyable with less people as you could easily wander around at your own leisure, didn't have to line up for anything, and weren't continuously pushed and prodded by the masses.

We parked in a free carpark in Bushy Park (the second largest Royal Park in the UK) amongst the native deer, weeping willows and duck ponds and were quickly strolling through the gardens to the entrance. I was expecting to be greeted by the famous vista one sees of the palace but that is in fact the back. The front is much less impressive and resulted in a "it doesn't look that nice" from Matthew.

Out of very bizarre coincidence, on the plane over I watched the first 10 episodes of The Tudors, my addiction being the sole reason for a lack of sleep. Hampton Court and all its players such as King Henry VIII, Queen Katherine, Anne Boleyn and Cardinal Wolsey featured heavily so I felt like I knew the place, the people and the stories which was wonderfully helpful.

The Hampton Court experience is highly interactive and first class. We picked up our audio guides and began our tour around the palace including visits to the Great Hall, King Henry's quarters, the kitchens and the Chapel. We sat on stools and played games, learnt the facts from historians, watched cartoons which brought the 16th century paintings we were viewing to life, were given an audio tour by a Page on King Henry's wedding day, and even had to dip our head when the King passed through a corridor. Everyone's faces, from kids to adults, lit up as he made his surprise entrance.
The outside is just as captivating as the inside although we were occasionally caught in intermittent rain - it was blue skies one minute, storm clouds and rain the next, then back to a fine sunny day. We wandered around the formal gardens, successfully found our way out of the hedge maze, saw the worlds biggest vine - a grape vine planted in the 1700s bursting with grapes (and the Guinness World Record certificate to prove it), and finally viewed that world famous, breath taking vista of the palace in all it's glory.

The palace, along with others such as the Tower of London and Kensington Palace, are run by a charity called Historic Royal Palaces, and they receive no funding from the government or the crown. That said, they provide a wonderful experience and it is so worth the expense. All in all it was a wonderful day!

I had my first go at driving in the UK on the trip home. There are several things that make this a nail biting and hair twisting experience - there are VERY narrow streets, there are lots of bikes, we're now driving on the left hand side of the road (yay!) but the driver is on the wrong side (boo!) so it is difficult to judge how close you are to oncoming traffic (although Matt was a great help), and our speedometer is in kms but all the signs are in miles, meaning we have to quickly make the conversion so we don't speed. It didn't help that I was driving in peak hour traffic either.

We're back into London today and are keen to see what the day shall bring...