Saturday 31 August 2019 – London Town

Our plans for today were to see Kensington Palace, and then see where the wind would take us after that. The easiest way to get there was on the underground. We switched trains at Earl’s Court then continued onto another station, followed by a 10 minute walk. We went through the gardens and found Kensington Palace. There were about 20 people camped outside at one of the entrances where they had Princess Diana memorial stuff. Today was the anniversary of her death, but you wouldn’t know it there.

Our tickets were booked for 12:30pm, so we had some scones and coffee/hot chocolate before heading in. The building was very grand inside. We visited state rooms of both Kings and Queens. They also had on display some things from Queen Victoria’s childhood times. It was very enlightening to see how they lived back then and what it may have been like.

We finished about 1pm and decided to head towards the Natural History museum. To get there we needed to walk through the gardens/park. Along the way we saw the Albert Memorial, opposite the Royal Albert building. Walking past the buildings there (named Albert Mansions), you could see that it was expensive. Cars parked on the street included a Rolls Royce, a few Bentley’s, couple of jaguars and then two Porsche’s. Not bad.

The Natural History museum was very cool – especially the dinosaur display. Upon entering they had a dinosaur skeleton which was named ‘Sophie’. We took our time and had a look at a lot of the different areas in the museum. Afterwards we walked a few hundred metres down the road to the Albert and Victoria museum. This museum was a bit different – it was broken down into year ranges. We visited the one that said 300 – 1500 first. That took a long time and we were quite tired so thought we would finish up there and head back to the hotel.

We had walked past the entrance to the underground when we came from Kensington, so we had an idea of where it was. Well, it took about 15 minutes of walking underground to actually reach the station. What a long walk!

We met up with Ros’s cousin Paul nearby and then walked to a restaurant for dinner. Paul has lived in London for over 30 years and we last saw him 2 years ago at Ros’s birthday. It was lovely to catch up over great food.

Given how busy the trains were today, we had decided to get a car to the airport instead of trying to lug bags etc. on the train. We needed to pack as the car would arrive around 10am the next day.