England 7: Thursday in London; Kensington Palace and Gardens and Hyde Park and etc with a very low Drama Alert

SO, my last post left poor Baker B rattled by nearly being mugged by a creepy possible-drug-dealer in teeny Devizes, and considering an escape from the town. Our landlady (I feel odd calling her a “host” or a “landlady” — after staying with her twice and being Facebook buddies I feel like she’s a friend now, so I will just start calling her S. As that is her first initial) S said it would be fine for Baker B to come stay with us in London for the last few days if he wanted – and she’d give us the other room and a price break (the other room actually did get rented twice while we were there although just for a night at a time, oddly). “Country people!!!” she said. “They can be VERY strange!!”

But by then Baker B was calmer and decided he’d stay put. He did like the guy he was staying with, despite T being a terrible slob (odd for somebody who was renting rooms as an extra income… and he got great reviews.) He was a very nice guy and they had pints together and T introduced Baker B to some crop circle people and also took him to the summer solstice at Stonehenge, which made me quite envious. We went to Stonehenge last trip but ordinarily you can’t go right up to the stones. During the Solstice you can wander all around amongst them. With about a thousand other druids and assorted hippies, but still. And he’d found a place to park the car that wasn’t terribly far from where he was staying — at a sports field, which apparently had no parking police- so he felt better about the parking situation too. And he really loved the area and all the hiking he was doing, and hated to give up a couple of days of it to come to London. I was really looking forward to riding the train to Pewsey, too, so that all worked out.

And with the Drama Factor fallen to a low level, we were free to do some more sightseeing. We really really really wanted to see a palace. I mean, you kind of have to visit a palace when you’re in the UK. At least one palace. Since we were trying to stick to London Pass attractions, we had to rule out Buckingham Palace. The pass included Hampton and Windsor, and either would have been wonderful. Sadly they were both pretty much an all-day excursion, since both are somewhat outside of London. Another option was Kew Palace, at Kew Gardens – I’d been thrilled to find that you can go through it with a Kew Gardens ticket now (it wasn’t open for tours last time we were there) and we did intend to go to Kew Gardens. But as the days flew past, we ended up having to pick either Greenwich or Kew, and we picked Greenwich. So our Palace Tour kind of defaulted to Kensington Palace.

One of the (many many) things I love about London is all the parks. Parks and green spaces. Kensington Palace and Kensington Gardens are in a huge park. Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park are joined, and I never did figure out where one ends and the next starts, but it’s an enormous area. We started off at the Palace, then walked through the gardens. It’s a pretty walk from Kensington High Street Station to the palace, and you get to see Queen Victoria from afar:

And then up close:

We were both a little unimpressed with the palace itself at first– it’s not quite as visually astonishing as, say, Windsor. It’s kind of…. plain, for a palace.

As a contrast, here’s Windsor:

Somewhat more spectacular, visually. But Kensington turned out to be really interesting, and we both enjoyed it very much. Bunches of monarchs have lived there since the 17th century, including Diana, who lived there from the time she and Charles got married until she died. I think that Kate and William will mainly live there too. It was Queen Victoria’s home, and there was a very interesting exhibit about her and Albert. Interesting and quite sad. They were devoted to one another, and he died when he was 42. She never got over his death, and it kind of explains why she always looked so grim in her later life. There was also another quite sad exhibit about Queen Anne, who was pregnant at least 17 times, had 12 miscarriages or stillborn babies, and of the five who lived, four died before they were two years old. The one surviving child died when he was 11, after dancing for hours at a party, and then collapsing. But it wasn’t all gloomy! We got to tour the Queens State Apartments and the Kings Gallery and State Apartments. Sadly we just missed the Fashion Exhibit – it opened RIGHT after we were there.

Victoria’s wedding gown:

Victoria’s mementos:

Someone’s trunks and suitcases. I forget whose they were, but I liked them:

Strange entertainmenty things in the Queens apartments:

Stairs up to the King’s apartments:

The King’s Apartments were quite fancy:

After going through the Palace, we walked around the gardens:

And fed the extremely friendly squirrels. (I overheard another American saying, very loudly, “WHAT ARE THOSE THINGS… CHIPMUNKS?” Sigh.)

Then we walked to the Round Pond, which is a kind of oddly scummy-looking pond with lots of waterfowl, and a nice view of the Palace.

Then we walked down through Hyde Park, past the Princess Diana Memorial Playground, to the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, beside the Serpentine Lake. The fountain isn’t so much a fountain as a circular water feature, with a variety of textures… impossible to explain and impossible to get a good picture of. This is a teeny bit of it.

The Serpentine Lake is beautiful, and we didn’t really see all that much of it. This is a park worth returning to. Repeatedly.

We walked all the way down to Knightsbridge from here, went into Harrods for about ten seconds (it was very crowded and we had no real shopping aims). We were tired and hungry and knew from our last trip that it was hopeless trying to find anything to eat there, so went back up to Piccadilly Circus and found a Thai place in Soho. An excellent Thai place called Thai Tho:

Where I had excellent prawn Pad Thai and excellent beer:

And an excellent view:

And OMG I can see why this is taking me MONTHS. AACCCKKK. Oh, well. To be continued. For many many years.