This weekend marked my first excursion to the English “countryside.” When I told my manager I was venturing out to Hampton Court, home of Henry VIII’s famous Hampton Court Palace he said, oh I’ve heard of that, there are a lot of people in costumes there. “Costumes?” I thought. Red flag number one. So I was planning to meet up with one of my friends from school who moved out to Hampton Court about two months ago – red flag number two, she has lived down the street from the palace for a while now and had not yet gone inside. I disembarked the train an hour and a half later – I should get serious friend points for this one by the way – and I was there. We walked through the town (by town I mean street) and got a quick bite to eat before making our way toward the palace. After somehow getting conned into buying a Joint Membership (It was cheaper they told us! For when we come back! Right…), we went in to sign up for the group tour. Upon entering the tour office we noticed long rows of hanging wardrobes filled with all colors and sizes of velvet robes. Red flag number three. See exhibit A, I stole this family photo from the web, but honestly these are the people we were with.
No way were we putting those on, instead we wanted to check out the Members Only room, one of the many perks that came with our joint membership. Some perk that was! After entering the secret code we opened the door to strange smells, families posted up in isolated rooms, and a kitchen complete with a 50p hot chocolate machine. As a member, I felt there was no way I was passing up my hot cocoa, even if I had to pay my 50p on top of the membership! The common folk didn’t even have the option! We grabbed my hot chocolate and skedaddled to go make our tour, still refusing to don the velvet robes, but proudly brandishing my hot cocoa, for all they knew it was free with my membership!
What we didn’t know, however, was that this was primarily an outdoor tour where our tour guide told us nothing we hadn’t already read on Wikipedia. The only thing Wikipedia left out was probably a fair warning that we should always say yes to the robes. Those velvety, sleeveless, Tudor-chic garbs would have kept us very warm on our miserable journey through the Wikipedia tour of the arctic. We made the game-time decision to break from the tour so we could find our own path through the castle. Fun fact; Henry VIII’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon was actually Henry’s brother’s widow, and the reason he “had to” take more women because marrying his brother’s widow cursed him into not producing any male heirs with her. I mean I know this was Henry VIII’s palace for entertainment and he influenced heavily the rather impressive architecture, but come on folks, let’s call a spade a spade – or in this case an adulterous tyrant! Overwhelmingly I felt they were painting this benevolent, sympathetic, and tolerant image of this guy. It was actually quite sickening, or amnestic I suppose. Yea, so what, he chopped off the heads of 40+ people, many of who were his wives or somehow related to his wives, but he was still a good guy deep down. The guillotine is our friend, right? God Save the Queen and the royal family mentality in full effect out here.
There were some redeeming qualities of the palace though, and I may just have to go back now that I have my membership, tour the gardens in the springtime and run through the famous garden maze, both of which activities would have left us icicles among the 60 acres of tundra land. On our tour of the outdoors we did see an operational sundial Henry had contracted which was pretty extraordinary. It displayed, the time (24 hour sundial), the tides of the Thames (back when there were tides), the zodiac sign (back when that meant something), the temperature, and something else I’m forgetting. It was gorgeous. We also saw an intact fresco of the Triumphs of Caesar. And of course let’s not forget my 50p hot chocolate that kept me warm for the first 10 minutes of our Wikipedia tour of the outsides of buildings.
We finished the day off with some tea and scones and then I headed back to the real city. Just in time too, all that fresh air and oxygen was beginning to get to my head! But if you come visit in the warmth I would be more than happy to accompany you on a journey of the Palace, and hopefully even catch a glimpse at Henry himself (alleged man in costume) who was said to be wandering around while we were busy warming up in the kitchens which were used to feed 600 people per day! Impressive! But lesson learned, next time I’ll put on the cape. Always put on the cape.
English word of the day: Quite = very, and is used for everything!!!! Quite cold. Quite pretty. Quite late. Quite a long journey. Quite quiet. Quite tall. Quite short. Quite ANNOYING! There’s no need to put that word before everything you say! We get it. The fact that you are commenting on the height of something is an automatic indication to me that you think it is VERY tall, so stop being redundant!
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