“I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.”
- Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
Our day
began very late. We always mean to
wake up by 9:00am and get the day started but it rarely plays out that way. It
actually turned out to be a good thing we slept in and got a late start to the
day, since we aren’t very good at killing time (pub, the solution is always a
pub). We ran into some confusion trying to find the correct tube stop and got
off a little early. It shouldn’t have been a big deal since we were in the
general area but we did end up walking for awhile until we finally found our
first destination: Kensington Palace.
I’ve
been to Kensington Palace (www.hrp.org.uk/kensingtonPalace)
once before and it was definitely better then. Fortunately, because of our Historic
Royal Palaces membership cards we didn’t have to pay, because I would have been
annoyed if that was the case. The biggest exhibit, the Kings Apartments, is
currently closed for renovations. The Queen’s Apartments has literally the most
morbid exhibit I have ever seen. The entire thing is about King William and
Queens Mary and Anne…and Anne’s eighteen dead babies. It started out alright enough.
In a room of authentic furniture Sarah got guilted in to sticking around for a
lecture by someone that works there. It was on fashion, technically, but
actually really interesting. Hannah, the lecturer, was probably the best part
of the whole exhibit. Sarah and I were saying afterwards that listening to
people talk about something they are passionate in is always interesting, and
this was the perfect example: take a topic neither one of us are really
interested in, but we gladly listen because they make it fascinating. The
exhibit went downhill from there, however. It was, like I said, all about Queen
Anne’s eighteen dead babies. She had something like thirteen miscarriages, five
stillbirths and one child who died at eleven. There was literally a room with
eighteen dead baby memorials. It was super creepy and morbid and we just really
did not like it. The only part of Kensington Palace that remained from the last
time I visited was the Fashion exhibit. They show dresses the royals wore from
the 1950’s to 1980’s. Queen Elizabeth II in the 1950’s was actually pretty
stylish, not going to lie. They were both our favorite dresses of the exhibit.
They also had dresses worn by Princess Margaret and, of course, Princess Diana.
1980’s dresses are so bad. There was one Diana dress that everybody was oohing
and ahhing over that seriously looked like Molly Ringwald’s Pretty in Pink dress. Overall,
Kensington Palace took a lot less time than we thought it would and I’m really
glad I didn’t have to pay because right now, it’s not worth it. I would be
willing to go once the Kings Apartments are reopened. It’s not like it will
cost me anything. The membership card is so far the best thing I have
purchased.
We
walked down to The Orangery to see if we wanted to eat there but it was
expensive, even with our 10% discount, so we grabbed a quick snack at the café at
Kensington Palace. The guy at the till was really nice and asked if I wanted a
glass with ice for my diet Pepsi. Little things impress me, okay? After our
snack/lunch we started to explore Hyde Park. It involved a lot of walking. Hyde
Park is massive and you will never cover it in a day, but we had fun. Every
time we got to a fork in the road we would pick a direction. We actually ended
up seeing a great deal of the park: the Peter Pan statue, the Italian Gardens,
the Serpentine – we even saw the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain across the
lake. After walking for over an hour we reached Marble Arch, which meant we had
essentially walked from High Street Kensington (think the top left hand corner
of a map of Hyde Park) to Marble Arch (bottom right corner).
After
sitting for a few minutes to rest our legs we discussed what to do next. If we
wanted to walk more we could have gone to Harrods or one of the museums in
South Kensington, but our legs were exhausted. We couldn’t take the tube
anywhere because Central Line between Marble Arch and Liverpool Street was closed.
It was a weekend in London, after all. Do the tubes ever all work on the
weekend? In the end we decided to go on a random bus adventure. So we picked a
route on a double decker (that would eventually put us at a tube station since
we had to meet Sandra at 7:00pm down at Westminster) and got the front row of
the top of the bus. We picked a pretty good route, too. It went through Oxford
Circus, the British Library and Tottenham Court Road. After about thirty
minutes of people watching we arrived at King’s Cross Station. I didn’t tell
Sarah where our end destination would be and It was fun when she finally
figured out why I had brought her to a random train station.
We were
there to see Platform 9 ¾, of course. We both like Harry Potter. Neither one of
us have seen the attraction before. It seemed like a perfect way to kill time. I
must admit, I was a little concerned we weren’t going to find it. I didn’t need
to be worried, though, because there was a massive line. It was around this
time we realized they were charging for pictures. We just took sneaky ones so
we aren’t in them. Later we complained about how stupid it is to take something
silly like platform 9 ¾ and actually charge people to take their pictures at
it. Why can’t it just be a fun little free thing?
We were
still way ahead of schedule so we had a couple drinks at a pub at King’s Cross
Station (along with some very good fries – I mean, chips) and eventually took
the tube to Westminster…where we were still thirty minutes early. So we went to
another pub. I don’t quite know how our afternoon turned into a pub crawl but
it did. We met Sandra under Big Ben shortly after seven, and met up with her friend
Laura shortly thereafter. From Westminster we walked to Garfunkel’s Restaurant
in Covent Garden. There was a closer one in Leicester Square but I wanted Sarah
to see Covent Garden on a Saturday night. On our way there we passed Number 10
Downing Street, the Horse Guards Parade (sans horses), and Trafalgar Square.
Then we went to eat. I have loved Garfunkel’s Restaurant (www.garfunkels.co.uk) since I first
tried it. Their pepperoni pizza is great, because the pepperonis are spicy and
the crust is super thin. After our supper we went up to Covent Garden. It is a
pretty cool spot. Also, perhaps the highlight of my day, we found a Shake
Shack. That’s right, like New York Shake Shack! I am so pumped. We already know
we’re going on Monday for lunch. This is how we make plans, because we will now
schedule our entire day around eating lunch at Shake Shack. We’re so cool.
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