Day two of the Banks County High School trip to London included a visit to the Royal Palace of Hampton Court, a guided tour of London, including Buckingham Palace, and an evening theatre performance at the Queen's Theatre. It began something like this…
On our second day in London, we woke up around seven a.m. and ate breakfast in the hotel. We found, much to our dismay, that Londoners not only drink their sodas and water at room temperature, but they also drink their milk and juice warm. Some of us couldn't even eat our cereal that morning because of the warm milk. We were served hard rolls and jelly for breakfast.
After breakfast, we started our day. The weather that day was very cold and rainy. We were told that they had weather like that a lot but, thankfully, Tuesday was the only drizzly day. The weather was warm and pretty for the rest of our trip.
We got on the coach (that's a bus, in American English) with our tour guide for the day, Keith, and headed to Hampton Court—the Palace of King Henry VII. We were able to sightsee along the way, as the bus ride took approximately an hour. Hampton Court boasts the most visited garden in the United Kingdom, and includes a garden maze. After we arrived, we all got off the bus and Keith gave us a tour all around and through the Palace.
We saw a lot of interesting things, such as the huge kitchens, many different thrones, portraits on the walls and paintings of angels on the ceilings. The rooms in the Palace were put together by restoration experts and how they think the rooms would have looked. There are no drawings of what the rooms actually looked like. While we were walking through a breezeway, headed to another part of the Palace, we got to see actors on the set for an upcoming movie, Jack the Giant Killer.
After we finished touring, we went to a restaurant on the grounds of the palace. We wanted to try something different so some of us went with the vegetarian lasagna. It was surprisingly, very good. We also had chips and cupcakes for dessert. Of course the chips were good because they are just French fries without any seasonings, and the cupcakes were very different than anything you would try in the U.S., because it tasted like wheat bread with icing on top. Others tried the fish and chips, sausages, rice, and beef pies. Jessie McCall had a dessert that looked like a chocolate fudge brownie. She said it was amazing but very sweet. Kassie Martin had some kind of strawberry cake dessert that was very good as well. Desserts were something that nobody really had any complaints about because they were all very interesting and good.
After lunch, we got back on the coach and were taken around London to learn many different facts about buildings and other aspects of London. We were able to get off the bus a few times and walked by Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, the trendy area of Notting Hill, and Buckingham Palace. When we walked by Parliament, we saw people with signs protesting the war peacefully. After our tour, we all went to dinner. We ate at a restaurant called Bistro 1. We had hamburgers and chips (fries) with banana soufflé. The hamburgers were really good and did not taste greasy at all. The fries were good when we dipped them in ketchup, which also had a more bitter taste than ketchup in the United States. Of all the food, our desserts were the best!
After dinner, we all went to see an amazing art performance called Les Miserables at the Queen's Theater. This is America's version of seeing a Broadway musical in New York City. We all enjoyed it and were very glad that we had the chance to see a play while we were there.
We learned a lot of things just walking around the city and riding on the coach bus. Most of the buildings were built around the 1800s and have similar structure. Greater London was established in1865. This was because it had pretty much burnt down in 1666. London was built mostly around the railway. The parks there are very pretty and are for looks more than American parks that have more play areas for small children. In London, parks are mainly grass and flowers. The largest park is Hyde Park. The largest bronze statue in the world stands in Wellington Park.
Overall, we had a very educational day in and around London that made us stop and think about the differences in the lives of the British and our lives in the United States.
