1) Up early after going to bed very late. I walked through the chilly gray dawn through the Embankment Gardens and across the Thames, ending up at Waterloo Station to catch the train to Hampton Court — my last scheduled activity before leaving for home tomorrow.
2) Across the aisle from me a young father was reading aloud from children’s books — one was about a horse called Sugarlump — to his two very young children.
Don’t stand in the driveway!
3) Hampton Court is quite prettily set up by the river. Please note that the entrance is a working driveway, cars coming and going, and you can’t stand in the center of the gateway for photos.
4) You will be very surprised to find out that I was quite early for my ticket time. I took a chance that they’d let me in beforehand, and I was right. (Not like last summer at the Alhambra and the Colosseum!)
It’s lavish, but I call it home.
5) On this Sunday, families with young children flocked to Hampton Court, which should be no surprise. Not only that, there was an extensive craft fair with food booths and whatnot in the large yew garden in back. Not only that, but a “band of players” was arriving to perform Shakespeare with Elizabeth I or something. The place was lively, and it turned out to be a high spot in my entire trip.
6) This palace is most often associated with Henry VIII (and Jane Seymour, who died there), but William and Mary also made it a principal residence. Throughout my wanderings I kept recalling scenes from The Private Life of Henry VIII, Forever Amber, and, more recently, The Favourite. I feel sure their designers took some sort of influence from Hampton Court.
7) Really . . . I wandered at will, finding first the chocolate kitchen off the Fountain Court, then the state apartments of William III (very Forever Amber all these), and then his privy apartments beneat them, a gallery of Restoration-era beauties, the state apartments of Queen Mary, the garden of the Chapel Royal, and finally the apartments of Henry VIII, including the last Great Hall built by an English king. The Hall was set with several long wide tables, with benches, and covered with tablecloths printed with fun facts about Tudor dining and cooking. And then galleries of portraits telling the story of the Tudor dynasty.
8) As well as a view of the Chapel Royal from Henry VIII’s pew, which is really just the balcony. A great deal of notice is given that this is a working church, not just another tourist attraction, and that photography is forbidden here. Suffice it to say that it’s gorgeous.
8a) Earlier, watching the “band of players” in the Clock Court (from a distance safe enough that they wouldn’t call on me), I noticed a man so very intent on taking photographs that he took zero notice of anyone in his way, including a petite Woman Older Than I who he may nearly have knocked over. Another man seemed to tell him off — the look on his face! — but the photographer was so very singleminded that he just shifted position. In Henry’s pew, he nearly elbowed me out of the way of a sign I was reading, but I was having none of it. Later I heard him asking the guide if there were postcards of the chapel in the shop; obviously he was disappointed he couldn’t take any photos in there.
9) There are so many beautiful gardens at Hampton Court! The garden full of yews at the back of the palace, the Privy Garden, the Pond Gardens, the largest grapevine in the world — in its own glass house, but with the roots in a big plot outside it — a “wilderness,” which the sign said was more formal than it’s planted now, and where courtiers could go to get “enjoyably lost.” Ahem.
One of the pond gardens.
10) And there is also the famous Hampton Court Maze, which I felt the need to walk in memory of Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. Their comic memoir Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, of their college graduation trip to Europe around 1923, includes them blithely entering the maze as a conversation piece, getting hopelessly lost while the rain started, and then being yelled at by a man in a tower through a megaphone that they’d been in there too long and needed to get out. Everything happens to them in this book — shipwrecked in fog, measles, bedbugs, forced to play volleyball in their best clothes with H.G. Wells, accidentally spending the night in a whorehouse in Rouen, trying brandy alexanders at the Ritz Bar, buying gigantic fur capes — and getting lost in the Hampton Court maze! Look it up, you’ll love it.
In the maze.
10a) The maze was full of the sounds of young boys racing about, and of other, older people. It was fun! But I think it might be difficult to do with a companion because it really isn’t wide enough to walk two abreast. In one corner the yew hedges had been radically pruned back to almost nothing, so it was possible to see a bit of the action.
10b) If you go: when you get to the exit gate where it says “Way Out” with an arrow pointing to the left, do not turn left or go through the gate. You are almost at the center, so keep moving right. Trust me, I learned the hard way.
I made it!
11) Finally, there was the tennis court, the oldest in the world, and actively used. I witnessed four players in tennis white (not Restoration wigs) whacking the ball back and forth. Fun fact: the Earl of Wessex plays there!
12) I did also get into the kitchens (very Private Life of Henry VIII), which are quite something.
13) And then, back to London. The day had become quite warm, and I walked on the Waterloo Bridge back to my hotel and a much-needed NAP.
14) After which I lost myself wandering through the Covent Garden area, vaguely recognizing street names, and having some cicchetti at a little Italian place. And then a gin and tonic at the hotel.
15) Tomorrow, home! I can hardly believe this journey has taken place now, but it’s been absolutely wonderful.
One of the King’s Beasts at the entrance.