A Very Royal Week

This week has been mostly spent relaxing after my traveling, blogging about the cities, and catching up with friends that I haven’t seen in a month. In between the sleeping, eating, and writing I did venture out to Kensington Palace. The palace has been closed for some time now after a two year and £12 million renovation.

Me + Kensington Palace the first week I arrived in London in December.

Just a quick history of the palace: The first royal inhabitants were the ‘William and Mary,’ who given back power after the Glorious Revolution. From there, the palace became a favorite for the royals since its gardens and location. The next big royal that lived in Kensington was Queen Victoria, who was born and raised in the palace. After being passed down from there, Diana and Prince Charles moved in. Prince William and Harry were born there and spent a lot of their childhood in the palace. After Diana died, a lot of Londoners went out to Kensington Palace to leave their flowers, pictures, and notes. Now, Prince Harry is bumming around in the palace until Kate and William officially move in! Kate is seen a lot of times walking her puppy Lupo around the Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park.

Since so much money was put into the Palace, I was really expecting a lot. Welllll…….I was kind of let down by it. After touring the Hapsburg palaces in Vienna and seeing Prague Castle, I was expecting to see the regality of the English Monarchy in the palace. Instead, I was led through this really high tech experience that left me more confused than anything. Usually, when you tour a palace (from my personal experience) you get an audio guide to lead you around or in each room has a sign telling its history. Kensington Palace had none of that. Instead, each room had weird flying birds hanging from the ceiling or a TV screen showing weird dreamlike sequences. The interior was pretty, but nothing compared to palaces I have seen in the past. I think the problem is that the palace had none of its original furniture or furnishing, so they couldn’t ‘re-set-up’ the rooms to seem like they were in Queen Mary II’s time or Queen Victoria’s time. 

The palace was split up into four different halls you could tour. One of them held famous dresses worn by Princess Di. It was pretty cool to see the actual dresses, accompanied by the original sketches and photos of her wearing it. Two other halls were those of King William III and Queen Mary II, but they did not resemble at all what they would have looked like back in their day. To top that off, there was almost no history given to the rooms. It was really weird. The most well done hall was that of Queen Victoria’s. It had her original wedding dress, toys, mourning clothing, desks, and papers. This section had more history on the walls to read than any other section. I did learn that Queen Victoria is super small and stocky.

King William III's Wing

King William III's Wing

View of Hyde Park from Kensington Palace.

King William II's royal clothing.

London is the center of the world!

Queen Victoria's Wedding Dress

Queen Mary II's wing.

From the palace, we wandered through the gardens, which were nice, but nothing compared to those we saw in Vienna. Does this sound spoiled? I don’t want it to, but now that I’ve traveled I have just caught myself a lot more comparing things. I mean, the palace wasn't awful, it just wasn't as 'royal' as I thought it would be. 

They were selling these in the palace store. Do I Dare?

Kensington Gardens

Kensington Gardens

We ended the day with having tea at The Orangery, which is the posh tea place next to Kensington Palace. Since King William III (of the William and Mary duo) was from the Netherlands, he was technically ‘William of Orange.’ Due to that fact and color, The Orangery has honored him by making their cakes orange themed and orange colored! I got Lady Grey tea and a scone that had pieces of oranges in it. Top that off with clotted cream and jam and I was a happy camper.

Tea at the Orangery

Something not so royal that I did was going to the library! Friday was the first time I went to the library this term! I haven’t needed it and I can write my papers in my rooom soooo….

Instead of going to the science library at Guy’s Campus, I walked over with Shay to the one at Strand Campus, which is the main one. Maughan (pronounced Mawn) Library is where they filmed a lot of Harry Potter. Dumbledore’s office is in the library and I would’ve taken people to go see it, but you can only enter the library if you are a Kings student! HA!

Maughan Library

Look familiar? Well it should...
It's Dumbledore's study!

Basically Maughan Library is this HUGE building that I would’ve gotten lost in if it wasn’t for Shay. Each major has its own wing, so since I was with Shay, I sat in the film wing. We had to walk through a long hallway, up 3 flights of stairs, through a trap door, and then walk up more flights in order to get to her section. I had to fight to get a table and once I did, I stayed for around 4 hours. After beings stuck on a paper topic for my Health & Society class, I finally decided I was going to do a comparative literature paper on Medical Cannabis. It’ll be a fun read, right? Now I know useless facts about marijuana that no one cares about, but basically from my finding I could strongly argue that pot should be legal.

Random fact: Did you know that in California last year, they made approximately $1 billion on taxes from medical cannabis?! If our government just legalized it and taxed it, we could be making a WHOLE lotta cash. Just sayin’!!

Another fact: It was discovered that consume cannabis was found to shrink brain tumors! They even found the exact pathway. Don’t tell me that isn’t crazy!!

Fast-forward to today- Today is actually the Queen’s 86^th Birthday! Happy birthday Elizabeth! Anyways, to celebrate her birthday, the army/navy does a gun salute to her. There was one in Hyde Park at noon and another at 1 at the Tower of London. Since we live closer to the Tower of London, we decided we would go to that one. To make matters even better, a boat was coming down the Thames, so the Tower Bridge was going to open! We killed to birds with one stone, as we got to see the bridge open and navy do a 62-gun salute!

The history of the gun salute dates back to the early days when ships coming into port would discharge their guns before entering to prove that the guns were empty and they were not threatening. Usually there are only 21 fires for a royal celebration, but since we were at the Tower of London and it is a royal palace, 20 more were tacked on. To make the complete 62, 21 fires were done in honor of the ship tradition of emptying their guns. Since Hyde Park is neither royal nor on the water, there was only a 21 gun-salute there. So, being at the Tower of London, we got the benefit of the doubt.

First, we got to see the Tower Bridge open. We initially thought we missed it, but noticed that they started to stop traffic on the bridge. Finally, the road started to open and we saw a boat go through! For being such an old bridge, I was super surprised when I saw how fast the bridge opened.

The Bridge beginning to open...

Slowly...

....More...

Tada!

After that closed, we waited around until the gun salute. The beefeaters were walking around in their really posh outfits they only wear on super special occasions. On a day-to-day basis they wear a blue and red uniform, but today they were wearing their red and yellow ones! At 1 PM, we were all super surprised when the first gun went off. We were not expecting it. We also started to laugh since everyone screamed and then prepared for the second firing. Guards were yelling and then a huge BOOOOOM would go off as the gun was fired. Since there were 62 shots, this lasted for more than 10 minutes? 15 maybes.

Looking classy in Red and Yellow

Looking fly in uniform.

Smoke from the fire gun salute.

It is kind of hard to see, but there are three guns pointing
off into the direction of the Thames.

More firing...

I was wondering as this was happening how far one could hear these shots. Imagine if you didn’t realize it was the queen’s birthday and suddenly you just started hearing gun shots? Yeah, that’s scary. Until you realize its only a gun salute.

After the firing was complete, the navy men had to clean up the shells, but the guns back on the trucks and drive them off.

Navy men after the gun firing.

Lining the path where the navy trucks were going to leave on.

Navy trucks driving off the guns.

Driving off the guns.

Navy trucks driving off the guns.

We left the Tower of London and then ventured to Borough market to get my veggies. I also picked up the paper today since it was a special edition with the Queen and Kate since it is the Queen’s birthday. Mmm, good reading.

Tomorrow is going to be SUPER exciting for two reasons.

(1) I am having proper tea at Fortnum and Masons!!!!!!!!!!! Gotta get all dressed up!

(2) The London Marathon is tomorrow! They actually run really close to my dorm, so I may wake up early and cheer people on. Supposedly the race is crazy since so many people get dressed up and stuff.

Will keep you posted!

I love LONDON!!