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!