T and S: Londonton Abbey

In case you missed it:
Londonton Abbey - Days 1 and 2

Day 3 we visited Hampton Court Palace, which was our absolute favorite sight on our whole trip. So there are a TON of photos. Just get ready.

Tuesday May 8th we caught the train from Edenbridge to London Bridge then took two underground trains to our hotel. Once again T was so good to schelp our luggage all over London. Luckily, our hotel was less than a block from our underground stop. That was seriously one of the best decisions we made about our trip. Our hotel let us check in early (11:30 instead of 4:00!) so we didn't have to drop our luggage at the Waterloo train station "left luggage" because that would have been pricey.

Since we already had a one day travel pass for zones 1-6 to get from Edenbridge / Hever Castle to London (most of the touristy stuff is in the heart of London aka zones 1 and 2 which matters for what travel pass you get) we went to Hampton Court Palace which is in zone 6. We were at our hotel for literally five minutes before we hopped back on the tube, grabbed a quick McDonald's lunch, then caught a train to get to Hampton Court Palace.

If you go to London, you MUST see Hampton Court Palace, even though it is a bit further away than everything else. It is SO worth it!

We bought the Historic Royal Palaces joint membership which gets two people into five different palaces in the London area. It was pricey, but actually saved us money because we were planning on going to some of the other palaces anyway (Kensington Palace and Tower of London). Now comes the blatant barrage of photos.

The ubiquitous red pay phones.

The gates leading to Hampton Court palace. LOVE the unicorn! Also, usually T dominates at the self photo, but this one took five tries to fully get us and all four statues in.

The palace belonged to King Henry VIII (yes, the one with all the wives). People, this palace was insanely huge and insanely ornate.

Later William and Mary of Orange decided to renovate the palace taking it from King Henry VIII's baroque style to the more "modern" Tudor style. But they ran out of money half way through, so the palace is half and half. (The baroque part is bottom left, the Tudor part is top right.) The palace is huge! And the gardens are even bigger!

(Interesting aside: the King James Bible was commissioned by James I after meetings held at Hampton Court in 1604.)

The main entrance.

The audio tour was free with admission. We started with the kitchen tour, which was actually very interesting. It takes a lot of work to feed a royal court! The annual provision of meat for the court stood at 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 760 calves, 1,870 pigs and 53 wild boar. This was all washed down with 600,000 gallons of beer (source). Check out this huge fireplace with a tiny fire in it! Back in the day it would be raging and there would be animals on spits on each of those racks. This is still a functioning kitchen and the things made in it are served in the restaurant.

This is King Henry's Great Hall. The audio tour of the King Henry portion was a bit yak-y but still had some interesting information. While we were observing the general splendor two period actors dressed as King Henry and a servant stormed through. The photo we snapped was blurry though.

Sitting at the king and queen's places at the head table in the Great Hall. It's always risky asking someone else to take your photo because it might end up blurry. Like this one.

So we asked someone else to take another photo. This one is a bit better, but the angle is off. However you can see the stained glass windows in the King's waiting room.

Have you ever seen this commercial? Well, the theme at Hampton Court Palace is: "Opulence: King Henry has it."

We caught a photo with King Henry VIII in the courtyard. The actors were extremely good and totally stayed in character. The advisor man (?) in the back wouldn't stand next to me because he "could not be at the same level as the king." Also King Henry insisted that a lady should stand on his left (I started on the right).

The clock tower on the Tudor side.

The wall art in this tudor room is completely made of weapons – guns, spears, knives. On all four walls. Cray-cray.

Like I said: Opulence.

We did rush through the William and Mary / Tudor portion of the palace because it had turned into an incredibly beautiful day (the most gorgeous day of our whole trip!) and we wanted to get out into the amazing gardens.

The gardens were literally breath taking. Everything looked so impossibly gorgeous.

Gah! All the colors! I die!

We seriously could not stop saying things like "I can't believe this is real!" and "This is crazy!" and "I'll take a dozen!"

And this was the smallest garden of the whole palace!

The whole time I just wanted to hug the grounds and gardens and take them home with me. The palace was incredible, but the gardens... THAT'S what I want to have.

We were messing with the camera and the white balance got off. Anyway, another lovely garden.

I heart flowers.

Apparently Hampton Court Palace has the largest grape vine in the world according to Guinness World Records. We didn't care too much about that, but this wisteria looked and smelled beautiful.

These flowers look like sea anemones.

You can see where the baroque and Tudor styles meet behind this garden.

Gilded gates

A most impressive driveway up to the Tudor side.

The backside of the Tudor portion. Still, not too shabby.

Seriously could not get enough of all the gorgeous flower beds.

Or the lake.

Doesn't this look entirely fake - Like T is standing in front of a painting or green screen?!

It blew my mind that there were palm trees in London. I have no idea how they are still alive because other than this specific day, it was COLD.

Black tulips.

This shrub / tree looks like a giant Hersey's Kiss. Also, as membership holders T and I could play tennis here if we wanted to (we saw others playing).

Another hedge maze. This one was larger than the one at Hever Castle, but we did it in less time (about 7 minutes). The sign says "The Heart of the Maze" but that maze looking thing is definitely not even close to an accurate representation of the maze.

More tulips! If you can't tell, they are my favorite flower. They look (and do) so much better in the ground than in an arrangement.

The rose garden was huge and unfortunately not in bloom at all. But I imagine it must be ridiculously beautiful when everything is blooming.

A few more with the baroque side as we get ready to leave.

The restrooms here (and some other places) were a bit strange. Instead of having a flush handle, some stalls have a pull cord. Instead of the toilet paper being on a roll, it would come out in little sheets, sort of like kleenex. Also, the sinks had two faucets: one hot and one cold. The idea is that you put the stopper in the basin then fill up the basin to wash your hands. This sounds gross to me so I would just soap up then quickly run my hands under the cold faucet then hot faucet and hope to balance it out. Something that is AWESOME about UK public restrooms is that the stall doors completely close with no gap on either side. At all. I feel like in the states the crack between the wall and the door on both sides is so large that you can easily identify people through the gap without even trying! Nicely done UK.

T in the empty baroque courtyard.

We really wished we had more time there. If you go, plan on spending a whole day, not just part of a day! Also, the last hour we pretty much had the entire palace and grounds to ourselves!

We took the train and the subway back to our hotel. Well, when I say subway I mean tube / underground train but in the UK a subway is a walkway under a busy street.

We had dinner at Burger King at the train station. The ice cream machine was broken. Every time I wanted ice cream in London it seemed like the machine was broken. There must have been some kind of ice cream machine epidemic because it happened two more times at different places.

Of course, more to come of our Londonton Abbey trip!