My mother in law planned her third visit around my husband's birthday. She has always spent his birthday with him and was not about to let something like being a long plane ride away stop her! So, when she made her plane reservations to come over, I immediately booked us to visit Buckingham Palace and the Royal Mews. When I was making the reservation I thought it fitting that we would be visiting Buckingham Palace on the 4th of July!
So, my mother in law arrived on 3 July and we headed into London on 4 July. This picture was one of the first things that we saw in London. On a hunch I took a picture. I have seen a lot of Chihuly, he has a very nice exhibit in the Indianapolis Children's Museum, and this looked like his work. When we got home I found out that it was indeed done by Chihuly!
We headed straight to the Palace to see the special exhibit in the Queen's Gallery, the Leonardo Da Vinci the Anatomist exhibit. It was fantastic! In the 1700's the royal family acquired Da Vinci's medical papers. The exhibit explained his work in detail. The text below is quoted directly from the information about the exhibit.
This was the book that the collection was bound in, I believe by his last assistant.
When we were done with the exhibit we headed to the Buckingham Palace and the State Rooms. The Palace is a fantastic place to visit. Particularly since the Palace has only been open to visitors since 1993. My mother in law had not had a chance to visit the palace since it had been open. It is open sporadically though the year but the summer time hours are a bit more planned since the royal family spends part of the summer up in Scotland in Holyrood.
Pictures inside the palace, like all the other residences are not allowed. So, we bought a official visitors guide, got our audio tour and headed in to see the State Rooms and the other rooms that were open. We were also going to see a special exhibit for the Diamond Jubilee, it is the Diamond Exhibit featuring some of the fantastic jewelry and other pieces that are owned by the Queen.
When we were done with the tour, we ended at the garden. There is a cute little cafe and we stopped and had a delicious lunch! We shared a tuna sandwich, a clotted cream and fresh strawberry scone with tea to drink! Yum! Here we are on the 4th of July in the garden of the Queen in the cafe with our matching Union Jack scarves! Quite smashing, right?
We realized that we were going to have a hard time getting the kids on time, so I made arrangements with the school to get me youngest one late. In the meantime Sean called and said that he would get the boys, so my mother in law and I decided to head to Harrods!
Harrods is an awesome sight to behold, for sure. It is also confusing and overwhelming to the non-shopper like me. I did get to see some of the fabulous design houses like Missoni and Alaia. If only money grew on trees! We settled for finding the Harrods gift store and grabbed some things out of it. We left in kind of a hurry as we were suppose to be meeting Colin at the train station. As we were descending the escalator to find the way out, we were not paying attention and ended up in the basement to find this sweet memorial to Diana and Dodi Fayed. It is really touching and I am glad that we were lucky enough to stumble upon it!
We made it back to the train station about 20 minutes before Colin. He was returning from his practice Duke of Edinburgh expedition. It started out really crazy for him, the first day both of his pack straps broke off. This was a brand new pack! But thankfully, it ended well and he was able to borrow another pack to get him though the rest of the expedition. My mother in law and I grabbed him and headed home. But we did not get to finish all of our Buckingham Palace tour. We had missed the Royal Mews. Darn, looks like we have another trip to London planned!
The Royal Mews holds the carriages and horses that the Queen uses. She has quite an extensive collection! She also has 3 cars that she uses. We saw the 1956 Rolls Royce which was really cool!
This is the Wedding Carriage and has been used by most of the royal brides. Princess Diana and Kate Middleton both used it.
This is the most magnificent carriage in the collection, the Golden Carriage. It is an impressive sight to see, the figures on it are life size, so the whole carriage itself is truly massive. It is also the hardest to drive and apparently has the most uncomfortable ride for passengers. It was last out for the Queen's coronation and will probably not see service again until the next coronation. It is a beast to get out, the wall under the windows has to come down for it to come out of the this room!
My mother in law and I had a fantastic time in London. In fact, because we loved the cafe in the Palace so much we used our tickets (that are good for one year) to go back into the Palace so that we could eat lunch there again! After a purposeful stroll throughAfter a quick bite to eat we caught the tube and headed back to the school to grab the kids.
The 4th really passed us over as a normal day for the rest of the family. The kids spent the day at school. Sean was asked by his co-workers of he was going to bring donuts in to celebrate. He told them that if he was going to celebrate the 4th like he does at home he would not be working and blowing things up, neither of which happened. My mother in law and I did have a great day touring the Palace and it seemed a bit ironic that we spent it in the Royal Palace!
So, my mother in law arrived on 3 July and we headed into London on 4 July. This picture was one of the first things that we saw in London. On a hunch I took a picture. I have seen a lot of Chihuly, he has a very nice exhibit in the Indianapolis Children's Museum, and this looked like his work. When we got home I found out that it was indeed done by Chihuly!
We headed straight to the Palace to see the special exhibit in the Queen's Gallery, the Leonardo Da Vinci the Anatomist exhibit. It was fantastic! In the 1700's the royal family acquired Da Vinci's medical papers. The exhibit explained his work in detail. The text below is quoted directly from the information about the exhibit.
This exhibition is the largest ever of Leonardo da Vinci’s studies of the human body. Leonardo has long been recognised as one of the great artists of the Renaissance, but he was also a pioneer in the understanding of human anatomy. He intended to publish his ground-breaking work in a treatise on anatomy, and had he done so his discoveries would have transformed European knowledge of the subject. But on Leonardo’s death in 1519 the drawings remained a mass of undigested material among his private papers and their significance was effectively lost to the world for almost 400 years. Today they are among the Royal Collection’s greatest treasures.
This was the book that the collection was bound in, I believe by his last assistant.
When we were done with the exhibit we headed to the Buckingham Palace and the State Rooms. The Palace is a fantastic place to visit. Particularly since the Palace has only been open to visitors since 1993. My mother in law had not had a chance to visit the palace since it had been open. It is open sporadically though the year but the summer time hours are a bit more planned since the royal family spends part of the summer up in Scotland in Holyrood.
Pictures inside the palace, like all the other residences are not allowed. So, we bought a official visitors guide, got our audio tour and headed in to see the State Rooms and the other rooms that were open. We were also going to see a special exhibit for the Diamond Jubilee, it is the Diamond Exhibit featuring some of the fantastic jewelry and other pieces that are owned by the Queen.
When we were done with the tour, we ended at the garden. There is a cute little cafe and we stopped and had a delicious lunch! We shared a tuna sandwich, a clotted cream and fresh strawberry scone with tea to drink! Yum! Here we are on the 4th of July in the garden of the Queen in the cafe with our matching Union Jack scarves! Quite smashing, right?
We realized that we were going to have a hard time getting the kids on time, so I made arrangements with the school to get me youngest one late. In the meantime Sean called and said that he would get the boys, so my mother in law and I decided to head to Harrods!
Harrods is an awesome sight to behold, for sure. It is also confusing and overwhelming to the non-shopper like me. I did get to see some of the fabulous design houses like Missoni and Alaia. If only money grew on trees! We settled for finding the Harrods gift store and grabbed some things out of it. We left in kind of a hurry as we were suppose to be meeting Colin at the train station. As we were descending the escalator to find the way out, we were not paying attention and ended up in the basement to find this sweet memorial to Diana and Dodi Fayed. It is really touching and I am glad that we were lucky enough to stumble upon it!
We made it back to the train station about 20 minutes before Colin. He was returning from his practice Duke of Edinburgh expedition. It started out really crazy for him, the first day both of his pack straps broke off. This was a brand new pack! But thankfully, it ended well and he was able to borrow another pack to get him though the rest of the expedition. My mother in law and I grabbed him and headed home. But we did not get to finish all of our Buckingham Palace tour. We had missed the Royal Mews. Darn, looks like we have another trip to London planned!
The Royal Mews holds the carriages and horses that the Queen uses. She has quite an extensive collection! She also has 3 cars that she uses. We saw the 1956 Rolls Royce which was really cool!
This is the Wedding Carriage and has been used by most of the royal brides. Princess Diana and Kate Middleton both used it.
This is the most magnificent carriage in the collection, the Golden Carriage. It is an impressive sight to see, the figures on it are life size, so the whole carriage itself is truly massive. It is also the hardest to drive and apparently has the most uncomfortable ride for passengers. It was last out for the Queen's coronation and will probably not see service again until the next coronation. It is a beast to get out, the wall under the windows has to come down for it to come out of the this room!
My mother in law and I had a fantastic time in London. In fact, because we loved the cafe in the Palace so much we used our tickets (that are good for one year) to go back into the Palace so that we could eat lunch there again! After a purposeful stroll throughAfter a quick bite to eat we caught the tube and headed back to the school to grab the kids.
The 4th really passed us over as a normal day for the rest of the family. The kids spent the day at school. Sean was asked by his co-workers of he was going to bring donuts in to celebrate. He told them that if he was going to celebrate the 4th like he does at home he would not be working and blowing things up, neither of which happened. My mother in law and I did have a great day touring the Palace and it seemed a bit ironic that we spent it in the Royal Palace!
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