Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court was built by the Archbishop of York and Chief Minister Thomas Wolsey during the reign of Henry VIII. Wolsey spent lavishly to build the finest palace in England at Hampton Court which he was later forced to give to Henry as he began to fall from favor. Henry VIII’s third wife Jane Seymour gave birth to the future King Edward VI at Hampton in 1537 and died there 12 days later. It’s said that her ghost haunts the staircase at Hampton. After Henry VIII’s 5th wife, Catherine Howard's past came to light she was arrested in 1542 at Hampton. She escaped one night and ran down the Long Gallery on her way to Henry to plead to him to save her life but before she got to him she was caught by the guards and dragged away. She was later hung. It's said that sometimes you can still hear her screaming down the Long Gallery. Hampton Court is also the site of the world-famous Hedge Maze. It was planted in 1689 for William III of Orange and covers a third of an acre and has a half mile of paths. We went in the maze and it took us like 20 minutes to find our way out and the whole time we pretended we were in the Triwizard Tournament in the Harry Potter books, lol. We took different tours of the Palace through audio head sets. I didn’t realize how big the kitchen was. It wasn’t just one really big room but like 30 rooms. You had rooms were the food came in and was stored. You had rooms were just fish was stored. Fresh meat was brought in and so there was a butcher’s room, also a room where this stew with the bones and scrapes of meat was constantly boiling. You had rooms that stored the silver, baked the deserts, and prepared the food. Also there was a room with a huge fire place where they would cook pigs over the fire. Then they had rooms where the food was all brought together and gotten ready to be taken to the dinning room. The servants that brought the food up had to line up in the order that the food was to be placed on the table and then bring the food out. There were so many people, that is lords and knights, to feed that there had to be two separate dinner shifts. The King and queen and all the really important people ate in another room. We also saw the living spaces of the king and queen. Right now they are working on a restoration project to restore the Queens actual bed!!! The some of the gardens of Hampton were built after Henry VIII's time and were built to resemble the gardens at Versailles Palace in France. At one point along one of the tours one of the people that worked there told us a story about the Versailles gardens. The French King really liked hunting but he didn't think hunting animals was good enough. So on Sundays he would round up 18-20 children from off the street and dress them up in bird costumes. He would then shoot them out of a cannon and then try and shoot them with his gun. Some he would tell to run around the gardens and he would hunt them down!!! By the way he was crazy!! We also saw the oldest and largest grape vine in the world. For lunch we ate at the cafe that is inside Hampton court. It was kind of expensive but the panini I got was soooooo good. Anyway Hampton court was definitely worth seeing and I suggest to anyone going to London to go and see it.


A swan in the Hampton court Gardens.

View of Hampton court from the Kings Gardens.

The Kings Gardens.

Another picture of Hampton court and the Kings gardens

One of the Spiral staircases
Kelsie, Sara and Megan in front of the Gardens.
The back of Hampton Court a view from the Gardens.
View of the Gardens from one of the upper floors of Hampton court.
The pond in the gardens with swans.

This is the first court yard (top)

This is the entrance to Hampton Court(Above)

(left) this is one of the rooms where food was made.

The fire place where the pigs were cooked. I thought it was neat how you cold see the black from where the fire had burnt the wall. (above)

(left) This is one of the court yards inside of Hampton.

Ceilidh Dancing

We did ceilidh dancing on January 11. It is sort of like line dancing in which you line up for some of the dances or get in a circle for others. You always have a partner for these dances. I was the man for most of the dances we did!! There was a live band with an accordion, drums, guitar and singers. If you've ever seen Pride and Prejudice it’s the type of dancing they do at the dances they go to. It’s a lot of twirling and clapping and changing positions with other people. It’s really hard to describe but so much fun!!! Here is a web site that tells you more about the individual dances and tells you how to do them. http://www.scottishdance.net/ceilidh/dances.html
Anyway it was a lot of fun and by then end of 2 hours we were all really tired and hot and sweaty.

Harlaxton Manor

Harlaxton Manor was built by Gregory Gregory in the 1830s. He was a wealthy Nottinghamshire businessman and this new building was to replace the original Elizabethan Manor House in Harlaxton Village. Gergory travelled throughout England and Europe seeking inspiration, ideas and indeed artefacts for this huge house. The manor is built of Ancaster stone and is an exuberant merging of Gothic, Jacobethan and Baroque styles creating an unforgettable and dramatic impact.


This is the Front Door of Harlaxton.

This is the pond in the gardens at Harlaxton where Bob lives.


This is Bob the swan.

This is the entrance to the Italian gardens.

This is the Italian gardens at Harlaxton. There are not much to look at now but I bet they are beautiful once spring comes.


This is the ceiling of the cedar staircase an example of stucco work in the Baroque style.


This is the fire place in the Great Hall.


This is the Chandelier in the Great Hall.


This is one of the lions in the front court yard of Harlaxton.


This is the Conservatory and it is one of the largest conservatories of its kind in the East Midlands.


These are the Koi goldfish in the Conservatory.


Me in front of another Harlaxton Lion in the back gardens.


The back gardens of Harlaxton.


This is Harlaxton Manor From the side.


This is Halaxton Manor, a front view.


This is the front of the Carriage house.


This is Harlaxton Manor again from the side.

First weekend in London

Horse Guards Parade
Big Ben
Westminster Abby

Kelsie, Me and Sara out to eat

The British Musuem

The Eye of Lodon

Cassie, Sara and Beccah in the taxie on the
way to the play!

The city of London is amazing, it never sleeps!! For a big city it was a lot cleaner than I thought it would be. When you’re on the highway, or carriageway as they call it here in England, there is a lot of trash on the sides of the roads but in the city it is really clean. The air is not very clean however, when you wash your face at the end of the day you can see the dirt on the wash cloth from your face. Anyway, on Friday the 12th we got to London and first went to our hotel The Royal National Hotel, which was in a good location for sight seeing. For the price we paid we would have gotten a lot better room in the States. The hotel room was bare minimum at the most. There were 3 twin beds, no alarm clock, no decorations whats so ever and the TV got "satellite" which amounted to about 5 channels, 3 of witch were BBC channels. One night however we were able to find Harry Potter on the TV. It took us a while to figure out how to turn the TV on because you had to flip on a switch, like a light switch, to turn on the power to the outlet that the TV was plugged into and then turn on the TV. That’s how all the outlets are here, in order to use them you have to turn them on. Once we got settled into our room we walked down to Leicester Square to get 1/2 price tickets for a play that night. I was the navigator and as the British say, and yes I have actually heard one say this, I did smashing job!! (I thought that was just from Austin Powers but I guess not) We only took one wrong turn but it was not that bad because we could still keep going and made it to where we wanted to go. We were hoping to get tickets for Wicked but they were all sold out so we got tickets for Les Miserables, the world's longest running musical. We then ate at a cafe in Leicester square. This is kind of American but Cassie and I split a pizza, but it was homemade pizza and really good. After eating the cafeteria food at Harlaxton, which usually serves British food like fish and chips and other tasteless food, I needed something I knew I would like. Then we went back to the hotel and got ready to go to the Theater. We were going to try and walk back to the theater, which was right by Leicester Square, but we all had high heels on so we got a taxi instead. The theater the play was in was Queens Theater, we were in the upper circle but you could still see every thing. The play was really good the singing was amazing I love there voices!!! After the play we walked around for a bit and then went back to the hotel. On Saturday we took the underground which is the British version of the subway to Notting Hill, or we thought we were taking it to Notting Hill. Apparently half the way to Notting Hill there was construction on the tracks so we had to get off and take the bus the rest of the way. Luckily we had gotten the all days passes for 5.10 pounds that are good on the buses and on the underground. Once we got to Notting Hill we must have really looked like tourist because this older lady walked past us and asked us if we were looking for the Portabella Market, which we were. She pointed us in the right direction. Portabella market was amazing, there were vendors everywhere!!! The street must have been like 3 miles long all full of vendors. There were vendors of antiques, clothing, silver, music, pictures, food and the list goes on. We tried also to find the apartment with the blue door like in Notting Hill the movie but couldn’t find it!! I got a print of a photo of London to frame and hang up once I get home and also a shell and silver necklace. I bartered with the lady that sold me the necklace and got her to reduce the price by 8 pounds. I also got something for my mom but I’m not going to say because she is going to read this, she will just have to wait till I get home. We left the market around noon and went back to the hotel and had peanut butter sandwiches in the room to save on some money. We then went through the walking tour of London. It took us past the British Museum, which we went in for a little over an hour. It was pretty cool; right inside the museum is the reading room. It is a room where some of the worlds’ great literature and such things as Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto were written. I also saw the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian Mummies, friezes from the Parthenon and Roman and Greek statues. We next passed the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery. We are coming back for a British Studies field trip and going to the National Gallery so we did not go in this time. The National Gallery is located in Trafalgar Square where a Russian Winter Festival was going on. I don’t know who was singing some Russian girl band but they really weren’t all that good it sounded like they just were screaming. Anyway next we passed Admiralty Arch. It was built in 1910 to provide an elegant ceremonial passage from the hectic Trafalgar Square towards Buckingham Palace. Next we came to the Horse Guards Parade and #10 Downing Street where the Tony Blair lives. Then we came to the Houses of Parliament which is attached to Big Ben. Big Ben is not the bell tower but the bell itself. Next came Westminster Abbey, it was gorgeous and huge!! At this point my camera decided to die so I only have one picture plus it was getting dark out. But I will be going back and would like to go inside so I’ll take more pictures then. Westminster Abbey is used for Royal weddings and funerals; it is also the burial and memorial place of Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots and also Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales. We had a hard time getting to Buckingham Palace because we couldn’t find the road we were supposed to go on to get there. Then when we did get there we didn’t think that Buckingham Palace was Buckingham Palace so we walked right past it. It really is not as impressive as we all thought it would be plus by the time we got there all but two of the guards were gone so we couldn’t even have fun with them. But like I said I’ll be going back and will have plenty of time to have fun with the guards. We then walked back to this Pub we had seen on the way but when we got there we were carded and they wound not accept our WI licenses as proof of our age. They wanted to see our pass ports which we had been told by Harlaxton to leave at Harlaxton. Even though we told them we were college students they didn’t let us in, I mean I guess we do, especially Cassie and, I look like we’re 15! So needless to say we didn’t go into that pub. Instead we found a nice little café by the British Museum and ate there. We then went back to our hotel and got a drink at the bar there. On Sunday we went to Hampton Court Palace. It is a palace of Henry VIII that was built by his minister Cardinal Wolsey. It was later used my William and Mary and at some point gardens were put in to resemble the gardens at Versailles Palace in France. I thought it was really neat and interesting. Overall I really liked London!! Seeing all of the historical buildings was preaty neat next time I want to go into some of them. By far my favorite was probably Big Ben of Westminster Abby.