For our free day I thought it would be interesting to visit the Tower of London and Hampton Court Palace. I am really interested in the Tudor dynasty andtherefore believed that it was necessary to see thsee buildings that were so important at the time. Both of them closed at the same time, so I knew that this was going to be a very busy and fast paced day.
The first thing I did when I got to the towet was go on one of the Beefeater tours. It was really entertaining and pretty informative. What was really nice was that since they live inside the Tower they have some personal experiences and inside knowledge that they can share. After the tour I went through a lot of the tower, but I couldn’t see everything I wanted to because I had a long trip to Hampton Court.
Getting to Hampton court proved to be much more of a hassle then I anticipated, so it took longer then I would have like to get there. Because of that I only got to see the palace and not the gardens, but I’m not to upset because most of them were added after the Tudor dynasty. The palace was fascinating, but they made it a little cheesy and were trying way to hard to entertain people. For example, they had a soundtrack going in the kitChen so that it sounded like there were workers there. Ignoring that fact, I loved seeing the structure and how it would have been set up during Henry VIII’s reign. There were small little details representing his wives throughout the entire palace, showing the progression of when the remodeling was done. I just love the fact that such an important part of history has been preserved so well and the attempt to show you what things actually looked like when Henry lived there. It would have been amazing if I could have seen the tennis courts, but I couldn’t find a way to get to them sadly.
Hey Kayla,
I also went and toured Tower of London and I found it to be a more beneficial tour than some of the others we went on during our time here. I love being able to see the Crown Jewels specifically. I thought it was interesting how monarchs would steal parts of past monarchs crowns to make theirs more impressive. I also really liked seeing the different rooms and chapels. In the centeral white tower I found the museum to be a bit boring and not as relative to the Tower of London as I would have though. Also I also think the fake noise is a bit cheesy as well at Tower of London they had fake fighting playing as you walk across some of the walk ways! Over all though I loved my visit there and would highly recommend it!