London Walks #10: Central Parks

I am finally getting around to blogging about my FINAL walk! Kristin, Sam, Anna, and I did this walk two Saturdays ago. We walked half of it, then just outside of Hyde Park, we rented the Barclays bikes and rode the rest of the walk on our bikes through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. It was a lovely morning with beautiful sights and it was fun to be on a bike again. It had been a while! And I wondered why we don't rent the bikes more. What an awesome idea! To have bikes all over the city for people to use as transportation or recreation. You can pick them up anywhere and return them anywhere at only a pound per hour!

This walk took us through St. James Park and past Buckingham Palace, where we saw guards closing off The Mall for the Trooping of the Colors rehearsal. That is the parade that celebrates the Queen’s birthday. The actual parade takes place this coming Saturday. Then, we walked through the beautiful Green Park, which is right next to the palace. We saw some lovely views on this walk. My favorite was standing on the bridge over St. James’s Park Lake, where on one side, you have a beautiful view of Buckingham Palace and the Victoria Memorial in front of it. On the other side, you can see an unreal view of London’s many churches and buildings and the London Eye. They look like there are all squished so close together from the bridge.

Anna, Kristen, and me in front of St. James’s Park Lake

View of London from St. James’s Park Lake

Today was another wonderful day in London. We started out with a morning tour of Westminster Abbey. I got to see Poet’s Corner and walk on Dickens, Handel, and Chaucer, just like Lionel in The King’s Speech. If only I got to sit on the Coronation Chair like Lionel did! It was out being repaired, but they did have a window into the repair room where we could see the chair and the lady carefully painting it. I saw the tombs of many royalties, like Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary I. The Abbey itself is incredibly beautiful and ornate, as I’m sure many of you saw as you watched Kate and William marry there in April. I wonder what it is like to be invited to the Royal Wedding, and to be knighted and to sit in the knight’s chairs in the quire. Oh to be royal.

Next, the entire class dressed in our Sunday dress and walked down a few blocks from our flat to Kensington Palace where we had “tea.” I found out this was on the schedule back in the prep course last semester and I have been looking forward to it ever since. I just love that we got to pretend we are rich and proper and go have tea like the high class English people do. I felt so posh and British. I loved it! We were treated wonderfully there. We sat in groups of four at cute little tables and were each offered a variety of herbal teas to choose from. I chose lemon ginger and it was delightful. Then our servers brought us each brought three plates layered nicely on little wire holders. On the bottom layer were cute little cucumber sandwhiches cut in perfect vertical strips. The next layer held a raisin scone which was delicious with cream and jam on top. The top layer (the best layer) was home to a tiny Barbie sized chocolate cake with cream and a raspberry on top, and a little lemon tart. Everything was delicious and gorgeous and I loved every part of “tea.”

My afternoon tea delights!

One of the perfect gardens at Kensington Palace

We strolled through the beautiful gardens on our way home to change into excersize-ish clothes to play…Cricket in the park! Our professor tried to learn how so he could teach us. We are attending a cricket match tomorrow, so he thought it would be nice if we knew somewhat what is going on. That was fun. I actually hit the ball! Not far or anything. It was much like how I used to hit when I played t-ball, but hey, at least I hit it! I'm going to be honest though...I don't know how much of an actual cricket game I'd be interested in watching. It sounds like it may get old really fast. But I'm open to try it! So we'll see. Who knows. I may just fall in love with it. Maybe Cricket will be the first sport I will thoroughly enjoy watching on tv! (I highly doubt it.)

Tonight, we all saw the longest running play in London, The Mousetrap. It is an Agatha Christie murder mystery that was superb! Remember when I was in that murder mystery in 10^th grade? I played that old Scottish lady, Janet McKenzie. It was so embarrassing because it was a great story, with an awesome ending. But you had to be patient and watch the entire long, extremely boring play before you got to the only exciting part, the last ten minutes of the play. (Aside from listening to me speak in an awesome Scottish accent if I do say so myself…haha) Well, this murder mystery wasn’t like that at all. The entire play was captivating and fun to watch! I loved it! I was always on the edge of my seat. I gasped several times, and the ending was crazy! (But they said I’m not allowed to tell it, so don’t even ask!) It was so much fun and it was in a really cool old theater and I highly recommend this play to anyone who comes to London! If it’s the longest running play in London, I can’t be the only one who likes it…(They have a counter of how many times the play has been performed in London and it is well over 20,000!)