Day 3 was all about the west side of London! These places were a bit out of the way from the usual touristy spots so we combined the two into a nice day trip.
1. Hampton Court Palace
2. Kew Gardens
I was super excited to visit Hampton Court because I knew of its rich history in relation to the Tudor dynasty. This palace dates back to the mid-1500s! And boy was it magnificent! Probably one of my favorite places!
Here is the walk up to the palace....it resides right alongside the Thames, which is to the right in this picture.
There were loads of school groups every place we went, but at Hampton Court they were particularly noticeable for some reason :P I'm on the left in this shot.
As we strolled through the many lavish rooms, we saw that so many had painted walls and ceilings - like this:
This was some sort of a ballroom of sorts with all kinds of weapons hung on the wall....this wasn't the only place we saw decoration like this though.
This was the King's receiving room
The royal toilet :P Took this one for Chris.
This was the privy garden - meaning private garden - for the Queen to stroll around in. It was very well manicured of course.
And this is the view of the palace from the back. You'll notice it's quite different from the front. That's because this portion was finished in the 1700s sometime during the Georgian era.
This place had massive amounts of walking grounds and gardens.
They even had a hedge maze! This was actually my first time ever being in a maze - felt like Labyrinth!
And we found the center, which was apparently the goal, even though we were trying to find the way out :P
These were some of the only flowers blooming that early in Spring. So pretty!
I just love cute little alcoves like this - I made Ramin take a picture.
Some interesting statuary
Inside the chapel you can find Henry VIII's dedication to himself via the stained glass
This was a tiny little walkway for the residents of the palace to access their private apartments. I LOVE it!
This was the main courtyard at Hampton Court - super impressive!
Next up was Kew Gardens. I didn't really know what to expect here but it turned out to be such a nice place. It was many many acres of just open space with all kinds of trees and flowers and conservatories, like the massive one below!
This was a cool rock garden we came across with some small waterfalls and streams.
Here I am taking a break near the pond and waterfall.
This was inside the conservatory. Ramin climbed the catwalk and snapped this picture of me down below.
This was another of the conservatories
They had a really cool "Tree Walk" where you climbed up these stairs - I'm looking down on Ramin this time - and they have a walk way up in the treetops to help you get a good view of everything.
This was the Asian section
This was called the Queen's Cottage - if only we could have gone inside!
What an awesome spiral tree!
We sat down near the lake and these two little buggers came quacking up to us wanting food. I was so sad we didn't have any cause they were so cute!
I can't recall the name of these flowers but they were so pretty spread across the grass like this!
This is actually Kew Palace - not very big is it? We couldn't go in but it was still nice to see.
I loved this huge tree so I made Ramin take a picture of me standing under it.
We left right at closing time - these were the magnificent gates!
This was the end of Day 3 - we had a rather long bus and tube ride back to our hotel. It was a good day!
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