Hampton Court Palace

Hey everyone! Today was a pretty great day, even though it was a bit rainy. I woke up early and went to Hampton Court Palace with Kinsey. Hampton Court is a palace where Henry VIII lived for a while and wed his 6th wife. Before I talk more about the palace, I think I should describe our adventure in getting there. As usual, the journey began on the tube. We had to go to the train station to buy a ticket and the ticket man gave us some directions. We ended up needing different directions, though. So we got on this one train to get to some train junction. We got off there to get on another train, only to find out that the only helpful platform was closed. Sad! We then got on a coach to get to another train station, where we caught another train to get to Hampton Court Palace. Whew! What adventures we had. We finally got there, though, and we were so proud of ourselves!

When we got there, we decided to start by walking around the gardens. It was a bit gray and cloudy, but no rain yet. We saw gorgeous flowers and huge fields of daffodils. It was so pretty! We also did a hedge maze and are proud to say that we didn't get too, too lost. Yay! After that, we went to see the Royal Gardens. They, too, were absolutely beautiful. There were lots of colored tulips and these huge trees that look like mushrooms. There were also lots of geese/duck-type birds. It was just a beautiful, beautiful space. And it was refreshing to see green grass!

By the tail end of our garden walk, though, it had started to rain. We decided to head indoors and do some exploring. Without going into exorbitant amounts of detail, I'll briefly re-cap what we did. We saw Henry VIII's apartments, other king's apartments, queen's apartments, the Royal Chapel, a garden exhibition, an exhibition on Henry VIII's women, and an exhibition on Katherine of Aragon, a young Henry VIII, and Cardinal Wolsey, amongst other things. The palace did this very cute thing that kind of celebrated the 500th anniversary of Henry's rule. They decided to give every visitor this wedding invite-type thing that had a schedule of wedding events for the wedding of Henry VIII to Katherine Parr, his last wife. Kinsey and I went to see the pre-wedding event, but there were so many people, it was crazy! Some people got to wear dress robes and stuff and the actors were really funny. However, there were just so many people, it was hard to see and focus.

On a whole, it was a great day. We probably would have spent more time at the palace had the weather been nicer. I loved seeing all the rooms and the palace was just really pretty (though it had a confusing layout). What a great way to spend the day!