We departed on the tube nice and early to get to Windsor Castle just when they opened. And it was a good thing too bacause there was a long line to get in after just an hour or two. Started off seeing the Doll's House which was freakin' awesome! Great detail, but definitely not the kind of doll house you play which (which it was never designed to be played with). Then it was up thought the State Aprtments which where also very cool. Very nice to see all the different styles and stories behind them. The only stinky part was that photography was strictly prohibited. Interesting that you can take pictures in Hampton Court (minus a few rooms) but not in Windsor Castle... Oh well, I got a few exterior shots of the buildings...
St. George's inside the compound was also gorgeous! I just love all those wonderfully old architectural styles. The quire with all the knight's seats were nice, especially with all the coat-of-arms decorating the various knight's stalls.
The Windsor trip rounded out with a nice lunch at one of the many cafes near the Windsor Station. I had a nice two course meal that started out with a mushroom dish accented with spinach leaves and a mild cheese. The main course was a French variation on bangers and mash. Both were pretty good, especially the mushrooms.
The afternoon was a bit of a debacle... Elaine (the art professor) and I were planning on going to the Design Museum because Bernie (the other theatre professor) had a coupon for "two for the price of one" deal. He was picking tickets for a show tonight and there was a miss communication where we thought he was coming back to the hostel so we went back there and waited... and waited... and waited... Long story short, he was still out shopping for his family. So, not museum today, it got rescheduled for Wedensday morning...
Then several of us when out for dinner and a show. We ate at the Spaghetti House and were served by a waitress from Poland! One thing I've noticed here is that most of the people who work in restaurants are not English. It can make ordering and whatnot a little interesting at times... then we were off to the Criterion Theatre to see "39 Steps." It was hilarious! It's a four person show but way more than just four parts. One guy played just one character and the other three, a gal and two guys, played all the other roles (and one of the guys, the short one, played half the female roles). It's a rip roaring time, especially since it was an Alfred Hitchcock movie and the mentioned most of his movies as part of the dialog. Basically, if your get a chance to see "39 Steps," take it!
Well, it's past midnight and the coach leaves tomorrow at 8am so I'll sign off for tonight...
Monday, January 2, 2012
On the seventh day after Christmas...
Was another rainy day... Well, it started out just being overcast and it wasn't supposed to have a chance of rain until around 16:00, but this is London and it started raining about noon. The stinky part about this was that we had gone out to Hampton Court today (the estate that Cardinal Woseley "gave" to Henry VIII) and we didn't get to walk arrouond and enjoy the Gardens because of the rain.
The actual palace was great! We got to go through the whole Tudor era kitchen complex where they were actually preparing a meal for that afternoon so we got to watch them and see things like the roasting rack in use (picture to come later). Learned lots of cool stuff too, like approximately 70% of the court's diet was meat (because meat was expensive and Henry VIII had to impress the foreign dignitaries)! The court had to travel around the country and spend time in various places because it would literally consume all the areas resources, and they paid for it too, so nothing so the king didn't get any freebies. And did you know that the pies (a meat pie for example) were just another method of cooking? That is to say that when you got the pie, you cut off the top, ate the insides, and discarded the dough shell (which was just flour and water anyway). It was a very education experience learning about the dietary and culinary practices of the time...
The Tudor part of the palace was really interesting and it was great to see a lot of Tudor era architecture, furniture, and tapestries in person (and many pictures we taken for source material).
The Georgian era additions were pretty interesting as well. The layout was very familiar having already been to several royal palaces in St. Petersburg, Russia, but it was nice to see the darker, wooden textures used more at Hampton Court as opposed to lighter, plastered textures Peterhoff or the Winter Palace in the Heritage. All in all, it was a designer/architecture lover's paradise...
Following that, I went back to St. Paul's Cathedral tonight to hear an organ recital to began the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year. It was a pretty interesting concert, although I personally felt that the acoustics hurt the softer sections of the music because it just kind of got all muddled together and the delicate details got lost in the vastness of the space. Oh, we'll... It was a free concert and it was enjoyable overall.
Alas, the alarm clock will be sound off in just shy of seven hours so I suppose I should go to sleep... Tomorrow, we are off to Windsor Castle!
The actual palace was great! We got to go through the whole Tudor era kitchen complex where they were actually preparing a meal for that afternoon so we got to watch them and see things like the roasting rack in use (picture to come later). Learned lots of cool stuff too, like approximately 70% of the court's diet was meat (because meat was expensive and Henry VIII had to impress the foreign dignitaries)! The court had to travel around the country and spend time in various places because it would literally consume all the areas resources, and they paid for it too, so nothing so the king didn't get any freebies. And did you know that the pies (a meat pie for example) were just another method of cooking? That is to say that when you got the pie, you cut off the top, ate the insides, and discarded the dough shell (which was just flour and water anyway). It was a very education experience learning about the dietary and culinary practices of the time...
The Tudor part of the palace was really interesting and it was great to see a lot of Tudor era architecture, furniture, and tapestries in person (and many pictures we taken for source material).
The Georgian era additions were pretty interesting as well. The layout was very familiar having already been to several royal palaces in St. Petersburg, Russia, but it was nice to see the darker, wooden textures used more at Hampton Court as opposed to lighter, plastered textures Peterhoff or the Winter Palace in the Heritage. All in all, it was a designer/architecture lover's paradise...
Following that, I went back to St. Paul's Cathedral tonight to hear an organ recital to began the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee year. It was a pretty interesting concert, although I personally felt that the acoustics hurt the softer sections of the music because it just kind of got all muddled together and the delicate details got lost in the vastness of the space. Oh, we'll... It was a free concert and it was enjoyable overall.
Alas, the alarm clock will be sound off in just shy of seven hours so I suppose I should go to sleep... Tomorrow, we are off to Windsor Castle!
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