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Vase of flowers in the hotel lobby.
And, that is a full size chair beside it. If I stood beside it, I would have to reach to touch the top of the vase. Day 14
Today we started out with breakfast around 7AM to get a good start on the day’s activities. On our list of things to do today, was to see Westminster Abbey, the Tower of Big Ben, Hampton Court and return home. Sounds easy enough considering Big Ben’s Tower and Westminster are close together. Well, as seen in pictures from yesterday or perhaps the day before, Big Ben, or the Tower of Queen Elizabeth that contains the bell Big Ben, is closed for repairs.
Westminster Abbey is open, and we took a taxi and were able to stop and see Buckingham Palace, No. 10 Downing Street, or at least the security gates that keep folks like us from going by it.
No pictures inside Westminster Abbey, so just words to describe what we saw. The history contained in that building is older than our country and is over 1000 years old. Puts a lot into perspective, on how young a country we have. There are old historical objects on display, many of which are from the 1500’s, king and queen funeral effigies made for their tombs, mostly from wood. A coronation chair from 1547, royal capes, clothes, portraits,
On the way to Buckingham Palace
You can see it at the end of the road. replicas of many of the things we saw at the Tower of London in the Crown Jewels exhibit.
There are many famous people also buried there, and honorable-mentioned people in Poets Corner. There are beautiful wall paintings, and a gorgeous floor that is only walked on for official ceremonies of the crown. It is made of inlaid marble and glass onto marble and is named after the Italian family that used the process to make the floor in front of the main altar. It is called Cosmati Pavement and you can only imagine how pretty it is. And, of course beautiful stained-glass windows, large and small fill every exterior hole in the walls.
You walk around with an audio guide, which makes it very informative, but so much information that it is hard for me to remember it all. Come and take a tour for yourself, you will be amazed like I was.
That tour was at your own pace, with the audio guide. I think we were in there several hours. When we were done, it was time to head to Hampton Court, the palace of Henry VIII. The Cardinal built it for himself, but Henry
The Queen Victoria memorial
The memorial was commissioned after the Queen died in 1901. I think it was unveiled in 1911. VIII thought it was too fancy for him, so he took it. Started being built in 1511 and finished in 1514.
We had lunch with a friend of Mike and Gail who live here, then walked around the town, and Palace grounds a while, and returned on the train to Waterloo Station.
That is another learning experience. It seems the only live people you can talk to about train and ticket information are at the outlying stations. Inside the main station, if you ask someone anything they tell you to go to the machines. At Waterloo Station, we wanted to know if we could use our Oyster card for travel on the train to Hampton Court. We “talked” to the machine for several minutes and the only thing it wanted to do was sell us tickets. We tried using Oyster card, since that was an option on the machine, but it only went to the screen to “add money” to the Oyster Card. Hmm. Let’s just buy tickets because we know that works. Put it money for 4 round trip tickets, the machine popped out 4 tickets, we grabbed and headed for Platform 2. Two of us used
our tickets and got through the entry mechanism, and two of us the ticket didn’t work. There was a lady that could tell we had fresh cards, and just opened the gate and let the two in.
While on the train, we read the tickets that didn’t work. The ones that worked the machine kept. Hmm, how does this work. Oh, now I see. The tickets that didn’t work are for Hampton Court to Waterloo, the return trip. So, evidently 4 more tickets dropped into the little tray after we left, 2 to Hampton Court and 2 for return to Waterloo. Oyster Card did work, so we didn’t have to buy more tickets, since it was in Fare Zone 6. (they work in zones 1 through 6).
We returned home, had a nice meal and called it a day. It was a busy day, but not as busy as the day before.
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