A Visit to a Royal Palace

I spent the entire weekend trying to recover from my illness, and I am pleased to report that yesterday I was almost back to normal. Today I woke up feeling pretty good and more than ready to get out of my room and back out into the world. I spent the whole morning in the library, catching up on work, and this afternoon I went to Kensington Palace to do some sight-seeing.

In case you don't know, Kensington Palace is one of the residences of the royal family. It is most famous for being the birthplace and childhood home of Queen Victoria, and later as the home of Princess Diana. Remember when Diana passed away and the news showed those shots of the millions of flowers left at palace gates? Those were left at Kensington Palace.

At the palace you are free to walk around the rooms at your leisure. We saw Queen Victoria's bedroom, Queen Mary's dining room, and King George the I's sitting room. There were also displays of clothing that would be worn to court; the clothing for men and women looked equally uncomfortable. One dress worn during the 19th century featured a ludicrously huge hoop skirt made of whalebone. I guess practicality was not a factor in the construction of these clothes.

There was also an exhibit featuring Princess Diana. It consisted of several rooms; a few contained large pictures of her, another showcased her most iconic dresses, and a few rooms showed footage of her in different stages of her life. My roommate Natalie and I stood in front of a huge screen that showed Diana's wedding ceremony to Prince Charles on loop; we were mesmerized for over twenty minutes. Keep in mind that I had never seen that wedding footage before; it was all before my time.
"Look at that dress," Natalie said.
"Look at that tiara," I replied.
"I want to be a princess," Natalie sighed.
The whole exhibit was interesting, but rather sad. There were a few old English ladies in tears as they wandered through the rooms. I felt rather detached from the whole thing- I mean, I remember when Princess Diana died, but I was only ten years old. I hadn't really known who she was at the time. Over here in Britain she has become somewhat of an icon; this sentiment was apparent as one looked through the Kensington Palace galleries.

Afterwards Natalie and I walked to the large pond that is out in the Palace gardens; it was full of geese, loons, and the biggest swans I have ever seen (their heads could have come up to my shoulders). As I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't get to see animals very much, so I walked straight up to a huge congregation of these birds; they were being fed breadcrumbs by some man. Close up they were truly gargantuan beasts; they were fighting over bread and squawking and making all sorts of strange noises. Their sheer size and their bizarre vocalizations frightened me. Clearly these were not cute, approachable animals, and I quickly left the scene, dragging Natalie with me. I realize this is a strange thing to mention in my blog, but I couldn't get over the size of these things; they could have belonged in Jurassic Park.

So Natalie and I headed home and promptly got stuck in the tube for over an hour (it's only supposed to be a ten-minute ride back to our flat). The tube is the most unreliable form of mass transit during rush hour. It breaks down constantly. We finally made it home and now I'm supposed to be working on my paper about battle scenes depicted in Assyrian wall reliefs. Can you tell I'm procrastinating? Until next time...