Blogs from Kensington, Greater London, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

Started off with a full day today. After a big flight we met Steph at Heathrow at 8.30 am. As soon as she got sight of us, she ran under the rope full pelt towards us and it was tears and hugs all round. We then organised our Oyster cards for the train and headed to our apartment in Kensington. Dropped the bags in and went for lunch at a local Kensington cafe. We then did all the attractions in and around Hyde park and Kensington palace. Then went to Stephs share house and off to an English pub for tea. We made it back to kensington by ourselves on the trains so that was a good effort. Some obsevations from today, Taxis are unique. School children all wear safety vest when out and about. The ... read more

Despite the fact that we had walked past Kensington Palace quite a few times, neither of us had visited there. My sister-in-law, who works for the Royal Historic Palaces, kindly offered the tickets for us – and we decided to visit there on 27 May. Since the reign of the William III and Mary II in 1689, Kensington Palace has been used as the royal residence and the parts of the palace still remain a private residence for members of the Royal Family – and we felt that it is a very royal-orientated palace. Many rooms had portraits of the British monarchs and their families & relatives, courtiers, large paintings and tapestries of historical events, frescos and carvings with mythological themes, and collections of blue-and-white porcelain. There were special exhibitions relating to George II in the ... read more

Even though the semester was over, my adventures were not. Mom got to London on Monday early in the morning, and I met her at the airport. We dropped all of her stuff at the hotel and drank some tea so that she could regain energy. Then we headed to the Latin Quarter to get a canal tour. What we didn’t think about, though, was that we needed cash to get on the boat! Although we missed the first boat, we got time to sit down for a snack and got on a different tour. The tour was very nice, and went through a lot of London, even Regent’s park. It ended at Camden, and mom and I got off to shop. I took her to some of the cheap stands to get lunch. Although it ... read more

Well, we arrived and I remember why I loved London the first time I ever visited back in 2001. London is magical. Even with a third of the city buildings covered with scaffolding due to the “sprucing up” taking place for the upcoming Olympics, London has an exciting pulse. Jim and I tried to pick up on that pulse when we arrived on Wednesday, but to be perfectly honest we dragged ourselves around from the time we arrived at 6:30 am until 1:00 pm when we were allowed to check into our room and threw ourselves fully clothed onto the bed for a nap. We walked over to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace, but the palace is being remodeled for the Olympics this summer and the Public Rooms are hosting modern art exhibits, so we skipped ... read more

The Natural History Museum is one of those wonderful Victorian buildings, so abundant in London, that draws your eye before you even get close. The architecture itself makes the museum a truly remarkable place before you have even stepped into the main entrance. Of course, when you do step in, you are greeted by a diplodocus, or at least the carefully welded-together bones of a diplodocus that probably died around 150 million years ago. The bones don’t stop there though; a huge section of dinosaurs contains dozens of nearly perfectly preserved dinosaurs and fossils, and by the time we were through the ‘blue zone’, maybe a quarter of the whole museum, it was approaching twilight outside, and once again we sacrificed the completeness of the visit for moving on to somewhere new. The Natural History Museum ... read more