Day 128, 9 November 2012, Off to Surrey. Far from our base in Essex, today we ventured to entirely the other side of the map to Surrey - Hampton Court Palace (Henry VIII's home) and Kew Gardens.
It was a huge day before we even reached Hampton Court Palace - Train to Stratford, change to Jubilee line, off at Waterloo and train directly to Hampton Court - an hour or more perhaps? Word to the wise... don't avoid weekends because of the children. Avoid SCHOOL DAYS because of the squealing, running, yelping, yapping, getting under your feet, barely controlled children. A staff member said to us, stay until 2 pm and they all disappear. And they did.
Pictured above you see King Henry VIII of England. Looking quite well for 450 years old we thought. We really enjoyed the walk around Hampton Court Palace - we explored Young Henry's story (before he divorced his wonderful first wife and got a bit "wife-happy" and "heir-desperate" shall we say), his apartments and also William III's apartments (Mary's were closed for renovations). We also visited the Chapel Royal and the Great Hall - we could just see feasting courtiers and royals gnawing on haunches of meat. It being the middle of winter, we didn't spend as much time in the gardens as we might have done on a warm, fine day - but we did walk through them on the way to fish & chips and a coffee and cake at the Tiltyard Cafe. Rejuvenated it was apparently just a quick bus ride on the R68 from Hampton Court to Richmond Station, then one stop on the train to Kew Gardens.... An hour later after many, many bus stops, windy streets and quaint-ish villages we arrived (foiled again by the bus). We didn't make it to Kew Gardens entrance gate till 3.15 and it was closing at 4.15 pm - which sounds early until you remember it's pitch black by 4.30 pm. Still enough time to enjoy the beauty of the lakes and trees, the peacocks, canada geese (and squirrels!) and of course the wonderful glasshouses that displayed plants from around the world in their specific temperate zone. Between our jaunts in Australia, Asia and now Africa, many plants were familiar but we definitely enjoyed the riotous colours in the orchid house and the carnivorous plants.... not a lot of those on our balcony garden in Sydney. Actually, depending how reliable our tenant has been there may not be much left in the way of plants on our balcony garden at all... We made it out the gate before they locked up and via two exceedingly long peak hour train rides, back to Chelmsford. Spent a bit too long travelling today - the novelty wore off. Plans for tomorrow? A little of this, a little of that... but definitely a final movie at a posh cinema courtesy of our London Passes. Bring it on.