Monday 2nd January, Tuesday 3rd January 2017
A beautiful blue sunny sky welcomed us to Hampton Court Palace. No more fog or mist or drenching rain of the day before…where they had continued with their New Year’s Day Parade in the centre of London. Everyone who was in this huge parade was wet, and the spectators continued to line the streets and cheer, in the rain! I am extremely impressed with British stamina.

Me – I had been so cold and I had been so wet and I had been so unhappy- ‘Not happy Jan’- Just ask my husband! He knew! And I had not even bothered to see much of the parade at all! We had only ventured out to the evensong service at Westminster because we thought we should, being Sunday, the first day of a new year and the ability to attend one of these services….but had scurried ‘sort of straight back to the apartment to warm up again! – actually, we were so cold and so wet we decided that we couldn’t get any colder and deviated to South Bank to get some mulled wine – amazing how that improved my inner warmth, my spirits and my sense of humour. It had been a chilled day out after our New Year’s Eve adventure.

So today we were blessed with blue crisp skies for our excursion out of London. We even managed to find the right train as Hampton Palace is 30 minutes south west of London …now that was a treat all in itself! (Do you know how many trains go in and out of London!)

Hampton Court palace once more propelled me back into history. (I gather by now you realise I have a thing for history!) As we entered the huge gates and perused Henry VIII’s extensive kitchens, which once had to prepare two meals a day for a court of 600 people, entering the henry VIII’s kings and queens rooms, the Tudor tennis court to the Royal Maze, ( which yes we tried and got lost! ), from the King’s private loo to seeing the additions to the Palace that William and Mary and the Georgian kings built, to the special rooms where George I installed his own private chocolatier so he could have drinking chocolate when he pleased – just trying to absorb all this incredible history was incredible.
And to think it was called a ‘Court’!

To cut a long story short, Hampton Court Palace was originally built by Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey, as a showy country retreat to host state visits. Unfortunately, he did such a grand job of out-blinging the king, that Henry basically seized Hampton Court Palace from Wolsey as compensation when the Pope wouldn’t let him divorce his wife Catherine of Aragon so he could marry Anne Boleyn! He fundamentally said “I will have this” and he did. He bought Anne Boleyn to this palace as his new bride!

To get a real feel for what life was like back then, we were entertained with one of the costumed ‘encounters with the past’. This was brilliant as ‘Lady Hartford’, a real character in history, (the aunt to Prince Edward) made us feel like we were actually there in the past. She addressed us in the main courtyard and talked as if we were living in those times too. Her information was accurate and set the scene for the whole castle, as we followed her about, including eventually taking us up to the Queen Regent room, shutting the huge door and informing us that King Henry was dead.

It was so real!
So authentic!
So entertaining and made you feel part of that historical facet of time.
Oh I would so love to do something like that.
What a great job!!
Another great day steeped in history.

Our final day in London took us to the British Museum. This was opened to the public on 15 January 1759 and with the exception of two World Wars, the Museum has remained open ever since, with an attendance of 6 million yearly. And we were two small people in that huge crowd! The museum holds art and artefacts from around the globe. Too much to even enter into a written description, but probably the most significant thing for Marc and I was- was seeing the missing parts of the Pantheon – bought to England. When we were in Greece, we saw the reconstruction of the Acropolis and listened to how they were missing large sections that had been taken away by the British. Today- we saw the missing parts….! After seeing it today, we felt that this missing section should be returned to Greece where they belong.
I Believe there is a lot of controversial issues in respect to the British museum and what it holds as part of its displays and history. I won’t go there. I must say though- a brilliant museum…. you would need days to really explore every room, we only did a minute part of the building in four hours.
But that was enough to take in.
Believe me.

One other impression we came away from our time in London, the French royalty may have been extravagantly lavish but the English court of the same time had a PROFUSION of palaces – maybe not as lavish in style, but more impressive in sheer weight of real estate.

A show at West Ends SAVOY theatre where we were treated to a fantastic rendition of Dream girls, and this is where we end our time in England.

Goodbye London
Goodbye history
I so loved it all!