Today we visited Kensington Palace, the present home of William and Catherine (Kate Middleton) and former palace of Queen Victoria. Since it is an active residence, there is only a small area open to the public. The queen’s wing containing the bedchamber, reception area and meeting rooms along with a private conference room. The king’s wing containing several rooms including the bedchamber, and conference rooms. First occupied by William & Mary and last occupied by Queen Victoria.
These are embroidered pillows with the faces of all the monarchs and important personages who have lived in the palace. The first is Princess Diana. The second are William and Kate. I am holding the figures of William & Mary. Since my niece graduated from William & Mary, I thought she might like the pillows.
Antique phonograph equipment from the Victoria era.
Large photographs of Princess Diana and Prince William and Kate. We waited patiently for them to come out and invite us into lunch. Guess we left too soon.
The king’s section of the palace.
Below is the Prince Albert Memorial commissioned by Queen Victoria. She was so in love with Albert that she wanted to create something that would carry his name forever. The result was Royal Albert Hall, one of the most well known performance venues in the world. It is an amazing facility. Unfortunately they do not allow pictures to be taken from the inside. The glass dome that sits on top is not attached to the building in any manner. It sits of its own weight. It was shattered by a bomb during the war but fortunately rebuilt. Because of the glass dome there was a horrible echo when the theater opened. Some Dutch engineers solved the problem with a series of inverted “mushrooms.” The giant organ is original and contains 999 pipes. Until I saw this place, I thought Radio City Music Hall in New York was the best performance venue I had ever seen, but this one tops it all. We were so impressed by the building that we had to buy tickets to see something. On May 15, the national symphony is playing movie theme songs so we bought tickets for that. Can hardly wait. On the grand tier level, the seats were sold and in return you received a 999 year lease with rights to attend 75% of the performances/year. We are told that often there are boxes empty because the owners do not show up. Even Queen Victoria had to purchase the 12 seats in the Queen’s Box, but they are much nicer seats than the regular seats. The building has held symphony concerts, tennis matches, boxing matches, ice capades, rock concerts (Pink Floyd was banned forever for setting off fireworks during his show) etc. The building is used about 300 nights/ year for various events.
More cappuccino and pulled pork sandwiches in the Borough Market for lunch.
An amazing 15,377 steps taken today (7.84 miles).
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