LONDON DAY THREE

By special guest Blogger, Chris, my husband... :-)
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Day three in London and we decided to get and early start so we were up at 7am in order to make it out to Hampton Court Palace and still have some of the day left for more sightseeing. Our room is extremely small (think of a small walk-in closet) and by the time we are done getting ready in the morning we are a little irritable. Fortunately once we leave the hotel we quickly forget the struggles of getting ready and settle into the day. We headed to the nearest McDonalds, not because we are missing cheap American food, but because they have reliable and free internet! After breakfast and a quick check of email we returned to the hotel to drop off the computer and then headed for Waterloo Station where we caught the train to Hampton Court.

30 minutes later we arrived at the palace and wandered into the old kitchen. The kitchen area was huge but I think Steve would prefer the new kitchen at camp. Maybe I can convince Steve to do some old fashion meat on the spit over the fire. After seeing the kitchen we found were we were supposed to go and picked up our audio tour guides. We started in the clock court (named for the huge clock that also gives the date and even the time of high tide at London Bridge) before seeing an exhibit on Henry VIII and his early years on the throne. Following that we went to the King’s apartment which included the great hall. It was fun to see all the school groups going through the castle. Some of them even had on high visibility vests with reflectors! After the great hall we has a private audience with the king himself while listening in on his counsels’ discussion of the King’s impending marriage to Kateryn Parr and how loyal she will be.

The next stop was the Royal Chapel which was stunning. Calvary has some beautiful wood work but this is a whole different level. The end of the visit was through the section of the palace designed by Sir Christopher Wren for William and Mary with a quick walk through some of the gardens.

After another ride back to Waterloo station we grabbed a quick lunch and discovered that there are no garbage cans in the train stations. This was very frustrating to me until we realized that it is because they don’t want any terrorists to place explosives in the trash cans. An effective form of security, but it makes we wonder what all the people do with their trash from the coffee shops.

After lunch we went to Wesley’s Chapel in a hurry since they closed in an hour. We had a wonderful and hilarious tour from a sweet old British man who rushed us through. The highlights (other than the guide himself) were seeing Wesley’s study including an exercise machine and an electric therapy machine) as well as the bedroom where he died. We then saw his grave behind the church before going into the chapel itself. The church is beautiful and I could just picture Sarah up in Wesley’s old pulpit giving a sermon. The pulpit is a wonderful wooden raised pulpit located in the center of the front of the church.

Our next stop was the London Eye. Once we got there and took a look we decided to save the $60 it would have cost us to ride to the top and instead walked along the Thames.

We walked all the way to Vinopolis which is a wine experience including wine classes and tastings from around the world. The tour starts with a great basic class about how to taste wine. The class was great and we wished we had had a class like this in Napa. After the class we were then able to explore the whole place and choose 5 different tastings. We were disappointed with all of the wines. I think we have spoiled ourselves with our trip to Napa. In addition to wine they also do tastings of other spirits so I took the opportunity to try absinthe which I have heard about, but never had. It tastes like licorice and was not pleasant. Since it is always fun to try different varieties of a spirit together I also sampled two single malt scotches. One of them was ok and the other was very smoky and tasted like I was drinking a burnt log. The tour ended with a Bombay Saphire (a gin made in London) cocktail. This was the best drink of the night.

We ended our day by making our way back to Paddington for our now nightly stop at the Sainsbury market for drinks and some chocolate.