Lovely and Warm

I never seemed to have change left when I got back to the hotel, so I didn't get around to posting again while in London. The lounge/living room of the hotel had a pay as you go computer. I think 10 minutes per pound. I always seemed to find myself with just a few pence left at the end of the day, so I didn't get another chance to post.

It all went so quickly. Like I posted earlier, I went to the Tower of London on Monday. It was amazing. I only knew that it was a prison, had no idea that it was also a royal palace. One of the first ones built by William the Conqueror. Found out about that and more from the very entertaining and informative tour. The Yeoman guards, aka Beefeaters, give tours of the tour grounds and they are (or at least my guide is) very good at what they do. They also live in houses within the tower walls -- pretty cool life!

Slightly surreal? An iceskating rink in the moat of the Tower with Christmas music pumping and green and red lights washing the outter walls of the Tower. I do not kid.

Wandered around that part of town for the rest of the day -- crossing the Tower Bridge and back, tried to follow a walking tour of the old Roman walls of the city, which started near the tower, did a little bit of it, but then it started to rain, so I decided to head back for dinner and call it a night.

Tuesday was supposed to be showers off and on, so I wanted to spend most of it indoors. Went to Hampton Court -- best know for being one of Henry VIII 's palaces and having a really cool hedge maze. It's on the far west end of London. I had to take the tube all the way to the end of the line, and then a bus for about 1/2 hr. It was probably a longer ride than that since we hit rush hour traffic as we got into the downtown of Hampton Court. At any rate, it was a nice drive, though it did reaffirm my decision to not rent a car. I'm sure I'd eventually get the hang of driving on the left, but it's not just that -- roundabouts are everywhere and the street signs and lines on the road are not at all familiar. I was happy to just sit and look out the window.

Hampton Court was beautiful, there were 4 general periods of history covered (some more thoroughly than others). Cardinal Woolsey's rooms (who owned the house before Henry) were the quintessential medieval/renaissance rooms. Lots of carved wood paneling and small spaces. Loved it. Henry VIII 's public rooms and kitchens are the next period. Imagine kitchens to feed 600+ people every meal everyday, and more for special occasions -- like it's own small village.

William and Mary knocked down Henry's private wing and had Christopher Wren rebuild them in a more classical style. (I'm tempted to describe them as colonial or federal in style, but obviously that isn't quite appropriate here!) The last section was the Georgian rooms which were lived in by George II and his wife, Caroline, Catherine (?) I can't keep all the names straight!

Hampton Court's rooms were filled with beautiful furniture, ceramics, and paintings. And some of the rooms had radiators, I was always trying to find them so I could stand next to them. Big windows and lots of hallways open to the outside made a lot of these rooms pretty cold.

According to one of the kids in the many school groups which were at Hampton Court that day, one of the courtyards was where they filmed quidditch (I think he meant the flying lessons), but I think he was wrong -- I only remember stone walls in the Harry Potter movies and Hampton Court was all brick.

Speaking of school groups -- I ran into a lot of them at all the places I visited. So cute in their little uniforms and with their accents, but damn they were loud! And not very organized. It looked like there was just one or two teachers with a class of 25 or so; that could have had something to do with the controlled chaos of those school groups.

Afterwards, I wandered around the town of Hampton Court a little bit. Poked into some shops and walked down by the Thames, until it started getting dark when I took the bus back home. It was raining and that made the drive back very slow. I'm not sure how late it was by the time I got back to my neighborhood -- 6:30 or 7ish. I grabbed some take-away and headed back to the hotel.