We had another free weekend after our trip to Lisbon, so on Saturday we decided to hit a few more of the sites around London while we had the chance. Our pals Eric and Anne also had the weekend off, so they joined us.
Hampton Court
This is a palace about 30 minutes southwest of London (by train). It was built in the time of Henry VIII (the one with the wives), and at that time would have been a far retreat from the city, although now it is right in the middle of the suburbs. To give a brief history, Cardinal Wolsey was the king's main adviser and very rich due to some less-than-Catholic deeds, and he built this palace as his home outside of the city. He was held mostly responsible for not being able to get Henry a divorce from his first wife from the Pope, and as such started to fall from the king's good graces. When Henry visited the palace, he made a remark similar to "It is grander than even any of my houses", and the Cardinal felt 'moved' to give the palace to him as a gift.
So, today, it is one of a few historical royal palaces that are no longer in use by the Queen or her family, but can be visited for a small price. Or, if your friends have bought a special pass, you can get in for free and save the $40 (thanks again!!).
The palace was pretty nice. It is enormous and it is crazy to think that one guy built it as his home. Of course there are some crazy palaces in the world, and it doesn't compare to some of the things that we've seen, but most of those were built by royals and supported an entire court. This was just built as the Cardinal's house. It is just crazy to think of the power of the Church at that time, and the extravagance that the power afforded to the Church leaders. You feel terrible for the poor parishioners who slaved in the fields and lived in huts and paid for Wolsey to build this mansion.
We spent the morning at the palace, walking through and seeing some of the rooms of the king, the art work that adorned the walls, etc. We even got an interesting story from one of the stewards, who told us that many of the pieces of art were there originally, but at some point were sold or given away to important families in the kingdom. Those families now have huge estates with outrageous tax bills, and in order to pay their taxes, they many times are forced to give up pieces from their private collections. He pointed out one piece in particular that had hung in the palace hundreds of years ago, but had just returned a few months before because some well-to-do couldn't afford his property taxes.
The palace also had some nice gardens, with some interesting cone-shaped trees and the official world's largest grapevine (complete with Guinness plaque - I think based on thickness, not length). After seeing everything, we grabbed a quick bite of lunch in the town and headed over to Kew Gardens.
Kew Gardens
This is a large park that is fairly central to the city, about half way between downtown and Hampton Court. It is supposedly the official garden of the Queen, and it is really enormous. There were a couple greenhouses that housed plants from around the world. The outdoors also contained lots of flowers and trees and other things that you'd see in the other parks of the city, but here they had small signs giving the proper name of the plant (which I guess is the main difference between a free park and a garden where they charge admission, unless the admission charge covered another world record - the largest compost pile).
It was all very nice, although there isn't too much to say - imagine trees and flowers and a few large greenhouses, and you've got it. I'm sure a botanist would be able to provide much more insight, but for us it was just a nice sunny afternoon outdoors.
On the whole, we had a great time. It was good to check a few more things off the list, and thanks to Eric and Anne we were able to do it very cheaply.
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