Per my discussion of yesterday about picking what to do while in London, we knew that we wanted to head out of central London today, but we couldn’t easily decide whether to go to Hampton Court Palace or Windsor Castle. Everyone but Emerson has been to both at least once, though not in many years. Collectively, we’ve been to Windsor less often and less recently than HCP, but we ultimately opted for Hampton Court mostly for logistical reasons (I learned you can use the Oyster card for short train trips from London and they apply to the daily caps, making travel really convenient and cheaper vs. individual tickets)… though it was a coin toss kind of decision.
We started our tour in the kitchens of King Henry VIII, which had the fireplace roaring. This gave the kitchen a wonderful aroma and atmosphere:
From there, we toured the Tudor state apartments, including the Great Hall and Chapel Royal.
Next, we visited the Georgian Rooms, which none of us recalled from prior visits:
We then moved on to the apartments of William and Mary.
After touring the grounds, Emerson frolicked in the palace’s playground, which we also didn’t recall but also didn’t have a reason to recall either. 😉
Done with Hampton Court, we took a mid-afternoon train back to London Waterloo. From there, we walked over the bridge to Charing Cross… just in time for the end of a protest by England’s answer to our deplorable Trumpets, which I understand turned mildly violent.
In any case, I navigated around all of this and up to Foyles for some time book shopping, which Emerson has come to love as much as we do. We then crisscrossed Mayfair and through Green Park to Buckingham Palace (which Emerson really wanted to see).
We took the tube back to Kensington and had dinner at Nando’s for some tasty chicken and then to Four Winters, where they make ice cream to order using liquid nitrogen:
