Even though I am definitely slowing down, my tourism goals continued over the summer. After tackling the West End and South Bank, I directed my attention to the neighborhood of Kensington, which is just to the west of the west end. In general, this part of town reminds me a lot of DC's Georgetown - it's posh, real estate is ridiculously expensive, and if you were Jackie O- this is definitely where you would live. It's also kind of hard to get to - requiring three transfers from our house, so it took quite a while to hit all the major attractions in this part of town. I did some of these by myself during the week, and others over the weekend with the family.
the downtown neighborhoods for reference
sights in Kensington
Kensington Palace
First up, Kensington Palace is best known as the childhood home of Queen Victoria, but is also the current home of both Prince William and his family, as well as newly-weds Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. It's a smaller palace, so it wasn't super crowded and easy to tackle in an hour or so. The house was originally purchased by William and Mary, so part of it is quite old, while other parts are newer and have exhibits on Victoria and some of the more recent inhabitants.
Kensington Palace
Victoria's famous white wedding dress
nice ceilings
Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park
Kensington's front yard is basically a massive public park, that joins with Hyde Park to be a simply massive park in the middle of the city. We visited multiple times over the summer - for a few picnics to watch swans on the pond, and to check out two really fantastic playgrounds that are memorials to Princess Diana - one is a huge sand play ground and the other is a big water fountain you can walk through - which was just critical in the hottest part of the summer.
huge sand area at the Diana Memorial Playground
So just south of the park is a bunch of museums, which we worked our way through on rainy and cold weekends.
- The Natural History Museum is an amazing building - but it's kind of lame on the inside. Packed to the gills with kids looking at animatronic dinosaurs, so not my favorite. Interestingly, the kiddo told us many, many times that he was not afraid of the huge, moving t-rex, but was too scared to go to the live butterfly exhibit.
- The Science Museum was pretty cool and not at all crowded, with some neat airplanes that the kiddo enjoyed, a very cool Gaussian math exhibit, and some other random cool things.
- The Victoria and Albert Museum I visited myself, not super kid-friendly, but a very interesting collection of decorative arts like musical instruments and historical fashion. Apparently it has a kids' section that I missed, so maybe we'll go back together this winter.
dinosaurs at the natural history museum (definitely not a scared face)
inside of natural history is awesome
lots of airplanes to see at the Science Museum
excited about math at the Science Museum
airplanes
Just to the east of the museums is Harrod's, a massive department store. While my dad was in town, we decided to stop in for lunch to take a break from walking between other stops. Most of the massive building is just a super expensive department store (not much to see), but the food levels are really cool. We had lunch in the tea rooms, which were gorgeous. I've decided tea is my new favorite meal - because it comes with amazing little desserts. Then we wandered down to the food shop level, where there were huge seafood markets and lots of cool things.
dessert display in the tea room
our lovely little desserts
part of the food market
Buckingham Palace
So Buckingham isn't really in Kensington - I'm stretching this a bit - it's really more the West End neighborhood. The reason I didn't visit back when I was touring the West End this spring is because the best parts of Buckingham don't open to the public until the Queen goes on summer vacation. Then they open up all the state rooms, which are simply amazing. Buckingham Palace, of course, is the Queen's residence and main home through the year. It was Victoria's home too, after she became queen and moved out of Kensington Palace, so there are a lot of portraits of her family. No photos allowed, so I borrowed these from the official website to give you an idea - it's just simply over the top.
Buckingham from above
More on Victoria
Between visiting Kensington Palace, the V&A Museum, and Buckingham - I got a bit of Victoria fever. I bought a small biography of her to get more info - and was kind of sucked in. Then I found the tv series "Victoria", and binged through the first two seasons (totally recommend). I also watched the recent movie "Victoria and Abdul", about a friendship she had later in life. She took the throne when she was only 18 - and was constantly fighting off uncles, her mom, and other advisors who wanted to either kill her or control her. She wasn't groomed at all for the job - in fact, no one even told her she was the heir to the throne, she figured it out herself while looking at a family tree. She married her cousin Albert and was almost immediately pregnant - which would've been terrifying at that time because maternal health was pretty awful - and then remained basically constantly pregnant, producing 9 children before Albert tragically died. She lived the rest of of her long reign in mourning for him, insisting that all her staff wear black for years. She reigned for 63 years - setting the record at the time, which was only recently surpassed by Queen Elisabeth II, Victoria's great-great-grandaughter. Anyway - I'm kind of smitten. [Sidenote: Victoria was queen during Dickens lifetime (in fact they even mention reading David Copperfield in the tv show), so this tied in well with my literature project].
So - for London tourism, I have a few more sights I want to see before I am completely immobile and the weather turns. I still need to tackle the City neighborhood, as well as a few things just out of town.
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