recording studio and folding bridge

This is our last full day in London...time had flown by! This time last week we were out over the Atlantic on the way here and this time next week we will be packing up our too much stuff to fly back across the pond. Hard to believe! I know there are things we didn't get to, but that makes me want to come back again. I'll have to start saving my pounds, I mean pennies!

I am surprised at how multi-cultural London is. I expected Brits and only Brits on this little island, but it is a melting pot like the US.

Kensington Palace tour today...Walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to get there....love that walk! Not at all what I expected but quite lovely, fun, and interesting. We mostly saw rooms, empty rooms with large ugly paintings on the walls and ornately painted ceilings. The ceilings had to be 30 feet high! Massive walls and doors. There were displays on what it took to be fully royally dressed in the 1700-1800s and all men should be glad they don't go through that today! Layers of clothing and you had to have a valet (pronounced va-let) to help you dress. Have you ever seen the paintings with the men holding what seems to be a hat under the arm when they are all dressed-up? Those aren't hats at all but just something to look like a hat that men simply carried under that arm! A man was never to cover his head in the presence of royalty.... tradition! A few rooms were staged as Victoria and as William and Mary had them with original furnishings. It hit me in the middle of it that I was standing where once had lived the William and Mary for whom my college was named! There was a display on Debutantes of England, a tradition of presenting young ladies to the King/Queen which stopped in the 1950s. And there was a wonderful milti-room display of Diana's dresses with photos and clips of here and the gowns right there. Her gowns were absolutely beautiful! (snapping the camera..) I loved touring the palace and wish I could have seen more! If only Buckingham had been open, but not so until August I think.

Went to the Orangery for tea, but actually I had lemonade and delish shortbread with caramel and chocolate on it! Cat said it was too sweet...no way! Just perfect! We called that lunch today.... The Orangery was built in the era of Victoria (I think) because she wanted orange trees and the trees were gown inside of the orangery. It is a lovely brick building with VERY nigh ceilings and BIG windows. Nice clean atmosphere for a rest and a sip of tea...Cat gave me a sip of hers! With a view of Kensington we could talk about what we had just seen...really relaxing.

We hopped a bus out to Abbey Road where the Beatles are pictured walking across on the cover of their Abbey Road album...we just had to walk across and of course had to do so several times so we could get pictures doing it! There is a live web-cam there so we called Harvey and told him to watch...haven't heard yet whether or not he saw us. That was a hoot! We saw Abbey Road Studios where the Beatles recorded, and of course there was a Beatles junkshop at the tube station there.

Tried to catch the bus back but the bus never came , so we hopped on the tube (for the last time) and got off at what we thought was a close walking-distance station to Paddington, but within a few blocks realized that we were in a not so good part of town (for only the second time on the trip so I think we are doing good!) with homeless people sleeping on the corners. We hailed a taxi for the ride to Paddington, had dinner (early for once since we had only eaten sweets today) at a place that had real American-type chicken strips....yum!

My friend Ginger gave me info on a bridge that unrolls to go across a small piece of water in the Paddington Basin, so we went hunting and Cat's good hunches led us right to it. The bummer is that supposedly you can make it roll up and unroll, but that was not longer possible. It was unrolled with no way to change that. However it was a really neat area with folks docked in their little boaty things and people walking all around and bridges all over the place...loved it!

Walking back we stopped at a grocery store where the guy asked if we were from the states. When we said yes he told us "I like your accent". We don't have the accents...everyone else here does! We had a good laugh on that one...

I am listening to Wimbledon as I write....would have liked to have gone there to tour since I did play tennis as a child and I still enjoy the tourney, but it was closed to the public since the matches started this week...oh well..with our luck we wouldn't have been able to find the right bus there!

This has been a wonderful week full of things I have never done and seen and things I never thought I would see or do! I have loved it all and can't wait to print the pictures (I have taken 600 so far and Cat has taken a lot too!) and relive it all over and over! Tomorrow we board a train to Newcastle Upon Tyne to see the Gateshead Millennium Footbridge...I can not wait! We'll be there until Monday sometime. Don't know if we will have access to computers like here---we have 3 in the lobby of the hotel and Cat and I have monopolized each evening. If we have access we will continue to blog, and if not we will try to resume when we get to Edinburgh on Monday.....

time to repack up all the stuff that we should have left at home....
until next time!