There are a few more photos I wanted to share, but they will have to wait as Blogger is having a fit when I try to upload photos.

Saturday I joined Melissa and Shane and some of their friends for a going away get together at a pub in west London (in Hammersmith). Melissa and Shane are off travelling for 4 months or so (including a trip home to Oz) and will be back in August. I caught up with Ayesha as well. I also saw a girl I used to go to school with, Sarah Edwards. It was nice, and yet really odd, to see her. I never really had anything to do with her at school, and we never really had anything in common, but it's been nearly 10 years since I left school (a very scarey thought!!). Scott came along after he had finished up at work and we stayed on for a few hours before heading off to grab some dinner and head home. We didn't want too late a night as we had a big day the following day.

Sunday we got up early to get the train to Hampton Court Palace from Waterloo. We were not as early as we would have liked, but we had plenty of time at the palace as it turned out. The train ride from Waterloo was only half an hour, on a shiny train too. We had 2 for 1 entry to the palace because we caught the train there - bonus! We arrived at the palace about 11.15am. We bought our tickets and headed on in. We were just in time for a tour of the King's Apartments with a costumed guide. He was fantastic. He was dressed as a gentleman from the 1690s, with a very long wig on (which I later asked to feel!!) and tights and a fabulous red coat. He was very informative, and gave a lot of extra information. He even gave a demonstration on how a gentleman would enter the room and present himself to the king. After the tour we got ourselves audio guides, which were part of the entry price, and wandered through the Queen's Apartments and then to King Henry VIII's section. It was all very interesting and very informative.

After that we wandered through the gardens. The gardens were magnificent. As you can see in the photos below, the colours are just spectacular. It's funny how wandering through beautiful flowers can make you feel better about the world. :-) We wandered through the maze which is where the servants used to go to find solitude and hide away from the world. It was fun. There were people running through it to try to beat others to the middle, but we were just happy to wander through. We found the middle, and that's where I took the photo from. I think the hedge walls were about 2 metres high.

We had a carriage ride through the park. Hopefully I can post a picture of that soon. It was very romantic and a lovely way to spend half an hour or so. Then we wandered back to the palace, oggling at more flowers and ponds and the oldest grape vine in the world. The privy gardens (as they are called, are some of the best I have seen. Everything is perfectly trimmed and manicured, the trees topiaried. Amazing stuff. :-) We saw the tudor kitchens, where I took lots of photos for a colleague at work who is doing a new Tudor workshop in the next school year at my museum. I couldn't take photos anywhere else inside the palace - it's apparently to do with Crown copyright, but we bought the shiny guidebook.

We took the ferry all the way back down the river to Westminster. It took about 2 and a half hours. We sat up the top for the first hour, until we got to Richmond, then it became too cold so we headed downstairs into the warmth. We went under 21 bridges and through one lock, the Teddington Lock, which is, I was told today, where the River Thames stops being tidal. It is a tidal river up to that point.

And then today it is back to work.