Buckingham Palace yesterday and Kensington Palace today. We took our time getting up this morning because we have been going nonstop. We've been up early every day and sightseeing all day every day. We met at the Regent's Park Station at 1 and took the Tube to Kensington Palace. We got off and walked through the park to the palace. There were gorgeous gold and black iron gates at the side. There was also a special iron structure at the front of the building celebrating the Diamond Jubilee. We went inside and started our tour.
There are four different parts of the Kensington Palace tour. There is the King's Apartment, the Queen's Apartment, Diana, and Victoria. We went into the Diana one first. That was probably my favorite. They had the coolest wall paper lining the walls leading up to the exhibit. They were sketches of Diana and the timeline of her life. In the exhibit, there were dresses that she had worn displayed.
After the Diana section, we went into the King's apartment. This was ridiculous. It was huge and so ornate. It was gorgeous. My favorite part of this section was one of the rooms upstairs. It was empty so I'm not sure what it was used for but it overlooked the front yard and lake in front of the Palace. It had to have been the best view in the house because it was exactly center. The decorations in all of the rooms were so beautiful. They kept all of the rooms dark though because we think that's what it would've looked like back then since they only had candles.
Then we went to the Queen's apartment. It wasn't as grand as the King's but it was still pretty. This was the oldest part of the palace. The most memorable part of this section was the room filled with little children's chairs. There were 18 of them and it was called Anne's 18 wishes.
Finally, we went to the Victoria exhibit. I loved this one because it showed the love story between Victoria and Albert. There was a little picture that Albert had commissioned of himself to give to Victoria. She kept it on her office desk. There was also a smaller one that was in a gold bracelet that she wore for the majority of her life. I loved seeing her wedding dress too. She was such a tiny lady. There was a doorway blocked off with a quote on the wall behind it that talked about how upstairs in that part of the house is the room Victoria was in when she found out she became Queen. There were also many rooms that featured Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. There was even a room where you could write a postcard to Victoria about her Jubilee.
After the tour, we left Kensington Palace and went to the Muffin Man. It was so good and such a cute restaurant. It looked like a lot of local people went there. I got a sandwich and a Queen's Mother piece of cake. After we ate, we headed back toward the park because some girls wanted to see the Peter Pan statue. Anna, Haley, and I went to TK Maxx instead to get some goodies before they closed. Then we stopped by the grocery store and headed back to our flat.
No comments:
Post a Comment