Ben's Visit - Hampton Court Palace

Saturday, June 20 – 315am: the alarm goes off. We get dressed, brush our teeth, and make sure we’ve packed everything. The phone rings at 339 – taxi is here to take us to Central Station. We take the 425 train to London Euston station. The plan was to sleep on the train in order to at least get a couple hours of sleep. We didn’t count on Ben getting sick and not sleeping at all…
We arrived in London at 915am, found a place to sit and rest, so Ben could recover. I bought some breakfast and got him a hot chocolate and we ate while I looked up directions to where we were staying online. (Yes, at the train station… I forgot to do it before I left. Whatever.) We couldn’t get to the place (the house where Leric lived when studying abroad here – he arranged it with the caretaker kid that we could spend the weekend!!) until noon, so we had some time to kill. Kings Cross and Pancreas Stations were just a short walk away, so we went exploring. Of course, first place we found is platform 9 ¾!! After taking too many pictures there, we took the tube to our place.
When we got in the room, Ben immediately laid down on the bed and fell asleep. I turned on my computer and started checking opening times and directions to Hampton Court Palace – since that’s where we had tickets to that day. I saw that it was actually the big day of the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII’s coronation and they were having a big to-do with the king and queen riding a boat down the river to arrive at the palace and then a feast and dancing and merrymaking!!

So I woke Ben up and we went to Hampton Court and toured the palace and gardens and joined in the celebrations of Henry’s coronation. Hampton Court was Henry VII's favorite palace to visit and is now commonly refered to as his playground. The interior has been beautifully restored to reflect the kings and queens who have called it home over the centuries and the great hall was just as it would have looked when Henry lived there! There were antlers all over the walls in some of the rooms, reflecting Henry's love of hunting, and the table cloths in the great hall explained some of the customs guiding meals in his time. We were also able to tour the kitchens - a place many of the palace's residents would never see themselves! It was so interesting to see a 15th century kitchen! (And a kitchen equipped to feed 500 people at that!) And then there were the acres and acres of gardens, expanded and elaborated upon over the years, these were beautiful to explore - and we were lucky to have such a nice day to lie out on the lawn for a little while!

The palace was to stay open late that night for fireworks and such, but we decided to leave early since we had all day plans for the following day. We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner where I had a chimichanga and Ben had a burrito. I ordered a frozen raspberry margarita – delish!! And Ben had a Corona (I think). Then, after we’d finished, they brought two double shot glasses of frozen strawberry margarita over to the table with the bill and a couple mints! Awesome!