Hampton Court, England

After our adventure of driving from the airport to Hampton Court, which we did without too much drama, we arrived at our first “attraction” outside of London. I felt like we were truly starting our honeymoon adventure as we arrived at Hampton Court, which is situated along the Thames River about 15 miles southwest from London, in Surrey.  We had a late lunch at this empty pub called Cardinal Wolseys where the owner was super friendly and even let us park our car there so we simply walked over to the palace.  

Outside the main gates at Hampton Court

I am in love with Tudor English history.  It all started with my mother's love for the same time period in history, she can tell you the order of the British Monarchs by memory! She's pretty impressive! Then, when I lived and studied in England for a year in college, I became more entranced by the stories and details of Henry VIII and all his wacky wives.  So, Hampton Court is one of those fairytale places where you can just imagine yourself living that courtly, regal lifestyle.  The place is immense and you can spend a whole day there, but we had a really fun time in the few hours that we explored the palace.

Inside one of the kitchen's many fireplaces...so huge!

The great part about Hampton Court is that they have worked really hard to make the historic bricks and mortar come to life.  For example, the kitchen was divided into many different rooms, each with its own purpose, and you get to touch and interact with the rooms…it’s not corded off.  They have placed props (like baskets of onions and meat rotisseries) in the kitchen area to help you understand what it would take to feed the 500 or so people living in a royal palace at the time of King Henry VII.  

Actors portrayed King Henry VII & Catherine (wife #6) on their wedding day.

The palace also employs a host of characters to reenact the wedding day of King Henry VII and his sixth wife Catherine Parr.  There was a processional and the King and Queen addressed their subjects (us). It was fun to see how they would use the large brick courtyards and rooms for stately affairs.  I would love to wear the clothes. So regal!   

Amazing clock from the 16th Century

Henry installed a clock at Hampton Court that still works to this day! It tells you the time, date, phases of the moon, and astronomical season.  It’s a pretty impressive piece of engineering. 

The gardens at Hampton Court

This is an amazing grapevine that is over 200 years old

We loved the gardens around the palace.  Everything was meticulously cared for and we power-walked as much of the place as we could. Most impressive was the “Great Vine” a Guinness Book record holding grapevine which is over 200 years old and still produces grapes. They make wine and jams from it that are sold in the gift shop, of course!   

What a gorgeous day! We loved being together at Hampton Court!

Salisbury, England

Poultry Cross in Salisbury

Salisbury B&B

We arrived in Salisbury Wednesday evening and after a lot of confusion navigating the streets of Salisbury, our B&B hostess, Suzanne, finally guided us to our resting spot. Our room at the B&B was like a luxury suite compared to the cracker-box hotel room in London and we were really looking forward to a comfortable night's sleep! We spent the evening walking around Salisbury, enjoying the beautiful flower baskets hanging on the lampposts. Our plan for finding a nice late-evening dinner turned into a Subway sandwich as we learned that everything closes or stops serving food quite early in the evening.

Salisbury Cathedral Exterior

Salisbury Cathedral Nave

The next morning (Thursday) we enjoyed a delicious breakfast at the B&B, packed up the car, and headed for Salisbury Cathedral. What an AMAZING place! By looking at the photos below you can get an idea of the immense size of this place. It was truly a "living cathedral"--a very old building, but many newer elements such as paraments and the breathtaking baptismal font (see photo). It was a large reflecting pool style font which was pouring water from it's four tapered corners, but even with the strong flow of water spilling form the corners into grates in the floor, the surface of the water was like glass!


Our tour guide at Salisbury Cathedral was church member and volunteer, Trudy. She was wonderful! She filled our visit with a lot of information, personal stories, and humor. The conclusion of our tour brought us into the Chapter House where an actual copy of the Magna Carta is on display.

Salisbury Cathedral Font

 -J

Driving in the UK

Driving was a little stressful!

After breakfast this morning we packed our bags and headed to King's Cross Station to ride The Tube back to Heathrow Airport. There we were shuttled to the car rental building where we were scheduled to pick up our car.

A GOOD stretch of road!

There was an unusually large volume of customers that day and our wait in line to get to the counter was about 45 minutes. When we finally got to the counter and were asked about why we were in England, we were of course offered a free upgrade for our honeymoon trip. We were hesitant, but learned that if we took the free upgrade and spent just a little more per day we could upgrade to the Passat that was rated to get about 900 miles per tank of petrol (gas). When the cost of a gallon of petrol was about $9.50 (they sell it by the liter), we decided that would be a wise choice. We soon found ourselves loading our luggage into a brand new Passat and rolling mile 10 on the odometer as we drove out of the parking lot.

It took a while to get the hang of driving on the right side of the car and the left side of the road. This was especially tricky when you had to shift (manual transmission) with your left hand. Jason took the wheel first and Erika was an AMAZING navigator. She also did a great job of warning Jason when branches were about to hit the side of the car. Oh, did we mention that it's road and then trees; evidently they don't believe in shoulders!

London, England

Our first full day in London started with a beautiful morning walk to St. Paul's Cathedral. If you're a Mary Poppins movie fan, this is where the Bird Woman sits on the steps to feed the birds... We spent some time enjoying the beautiful interior of the Cathedral before climbing the steps to the Whispering Gallery just inside the base of the dome. From there we continued our climb up spiral staircases, through narrow passages, and up steps that twisted this way and that as we made our way between the interior and exterior of the dome finally coming out to breathtaking views from atop the dome! Check out the photo!

St. Paul's Cathedral from the Thames River

View from above the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral

Walker organ at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

St. Martin-in-the-Fields

Window above altar at St. Martin-in-the-Fields

After walking around the city for a while we arrived at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. This church is famous both for its beauty and also its continued mission work toward the homeless. Even as we visited (no admission fee--very uncommon) there were homeless individuals resting on the pews amongst the tourists and visitors. We were particularly touched as we watched a homeless man walk quietly down the side aisle as he was going to leave. He stopped at the rack of memory candles (tealights which visitors may light as they say a prayer--coin box and recommended donation requested), he lit a candle, paused with bowed head, then dropped what sounded to be a couple pence into the box, and quietly slipped out the side door. It was wonderful to see God's work in this city!

Lunch in the Crypt

We also enjoyed lunch at the Cafe in the Crypt at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Many churches in the UK have cleared out the cobwebs in the lower level (crypt) where the floors are covered with epitaphs for those buried within the church. St. Martin's is one of these. If you look carefully at the photo to the right you can see the outlines of the stones on the floor and maybe get a glimpse of some of the lettering.

A tour via the Thames

Later in the day we took a boat cruise down the Thames (Tems) River. It was a beautiful afternoon--sunny with a light breeze. A refreshing change from the heat as we arrived in London. The boat tour was very informative and gave great views of famous and infamous landmarks and provided an opportunity for views not often possible because of the close proximity of all the buildings.

Tower Bridge

We took advantage of our pass to ride the double-decker bus tour again in the afternoon and spent a lot of time walking around and enjoying all that London has to offer.

That evening we purchased discount theater tickets and saw a British performance of the musical Chicago. It was fun to see how the show was staged across the pond!

-J

London, England

Leaving MSP

Our honeymoon adventure began the night of the 27th. We left MSP airport at 7:20pm and arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland around 6:20am (time change +6hrs) on the 28th. That was sure an adventure! Our airplane pulled into the gate, we unloaded on the second level, went down the stairs, through security and a passport check, then back up stairs (along a glass wall so we could see the previous steps right next to us, through a second passport check, and, you guessed it--right back onto the SAME PLANE! We left Iceland at about 7:20am and then arrived in London, England at about 11:45am (time change +1hr).

Jason on the Underground.

After claiming our baggage and then entering through the passport checks again, we made our way through Heathrow International Airport and down the LONG halls to The Underground Station. The Underground (aka: The Tube) is London's lightrail train service. We purchased Oyster cards (passcards for The Tube) and rode a train to London. We were exhausted and the 1hr train ride went pretty uneventfully, although it doesn't take long for you to get really sick of the recorded voice telling you to "Mind the gap..."

Trafalgar Square

Our train took us into the heart of London and King's Cross Station. Yes, for those of you who are Harry Potter fans, that's the station where Harry boards the Hogwarts Express in the movie. It was a really cool place, but unfortunately under construction/repair so we didn't get to see the true beauty of this old station. From here we walked to our hotel . Crackerbox is a very generous term for our room. We had to turn sideways to get across the room and the shower splattered water all over the whole bathroom floor. It did have a huge window that opened--too bad there was no airflow between the close buildings! After dropping our luggage and taking about 30 seconds to tour the whole room, we decided first on our tour agenda for the day was finding a store where we could buy a fan to have some air movement! Luckily there was a hardware store just down the street where we spent the best 14pounds of the trip on a fan that we carried along everywhere we went!

Erika in our TINY hotel room.

We spent the rest of the day walking around London ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all the amazing sites. Erika loved being back in London and Jason in awe that he was finally there! We spent time walking through Trafalgar Square, past Buckingham Palace, and taking some rides on the double-decker, open-top, hop-on-hop-off tour buses.

A beautiful evening view of Big Ben.

-J