Hampton Court Palace is my favorite place we have toured in London. I felt like I was living out every fairytale I’ve ever loved. It was crazy imagining it as a house, where people lived and carried out their everyday lives. It’s where people fell in love, ate breakfast, worked, played cards. It’s hard imaging a palace being a home but to King Henry the Eighth and his 6 wives, it was.
The architecture itself was wildly impressive. The design was beautiful and it must’ve taken some creative and ingenious minds to create the structure. I was in awe of every brick and brush stroke. Everything was so perfectly intentional and I just got this overwhelming feeling of envy that I couldn’t see it when it was in its prime.
I love how preserved everything was. One of the most impressive preservations was the playing cards and the tables where they played their games at. The cards were old and yellowed and felt as thin as paper, but here was this thing in my hands that someone else hundreds of years ago held in theirs. How amazing is that?
They also had an old bed, beautifully preserved and a lot of old China plates and vases. Something I found particularly interesting was the fact that most walls in the more common rooms were draped in fabric. I wondered if that was done intentionally when it became a tourist location in an effort to keep the walls preserved and safe from human touch? Or if that’s really how it’s been all these years?
My all time favorite part of this day was walking through the gardens. I was living out my big Bridgerton dream and I enjoyed just sitting silently in the grass and looking around, being grateful for my presence in such a beautiful and historically rich place.
Theatre in London U of A 