London, Day Eight

Today was the day that hardly went according to plan at all. Mom and I went round and round last night about what our plan for today was going to be and we ended up switching just about everything around as we went along today. All that work for nothing.

So we originally planned on starting the day with the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. We knew we needed to get there early because, in the words of Rick Steve, "every tourist in London was there." There has never been a more accurate statement. It. Was. Packed. Mom had been to the changing of the guard during one of her previous trips to London, but she said she couldn't see anything so she didn't stay the whole time. She said from the spot we were at, we would only be able to see the guards enter Buckingham Palace, none of the cool stuff that happens inside the gates. We decided it wasn't worth our while to stay. Even if we did decide we wanted to see the guards enter, we would have had to wait for forty-five minutes just to see that. So we took a picture in front of the palace on our way out and headed to the next thing on our list.

Again, originally we planned a shopping day to follow watching the changing of the guard; we had a few specific places we wanted to go, not just shopping for the sake of shopping. Yet, it was a gorgeously sunny day. Mom and I had been looking into taking a double-decker bus tour tomorrow, but we decided to do it today instead since it had turned out to be such a beautiful day. We road the bus around, starting at Buckingham Palace, through the Westminster/Parliament area, all through the financial district of London and past the Tower of London, finally hopping off at Hyde Park to grab some lunch. Truth be told, I was kind of glad to get off that bus. While it was extremely interesting to learn about the different areas of London, it was certainly not a relaxing tour. The traffic in London, or any big city for that matter, is extremely chaotic. I could have sworn we were going to get into a wreck at least ten times and my body tensed up every single time we stopped. It was good to be walking on solid ground again after that ride.

Here is a picture I took of a cool dragon statue with the English coat of arms while on the bus tour

We grabbed lunch from a food place called Pret - A - Manger, which has premade sandwiches and other side items like chips. We decided to semi-picnic our lunch in the park, which was a gorgeous scene. They had chairs set up across the lawn (not free of course) that we sat in and just took in the greenery. The park was huge and surrounded by trees in a way that made you almost forget you were in the middle of a giant city. We enjoyed the generous sunlight of the day while we were in our chairs and just relaxed.

Lunch in Hyde Park with Mom

Once lunch was over, we hopped on the tube and went to the Baker Street area, to check out Daunt Books, a neat, old bookstore that has been kept up over the years. I didn't end up buying anything, but the store was very beautiful and had quite the selection of books.

We didn't linger long at the bookstore. We had a busy evening planned so we ran back to the flat and freshened ourselves up for what was sure to be a long and interesting evening.

We headed out of our flat around 4:30 to catch a train from the Waterloo station to Twickenham, England, where the beautiful Gothic mansion of Strawberry Hill awaited us. We arrived in the quaint town of Twickenham just in time for a quick dinner before our tour. We didn't realize just how quaint it was when we made plans to grab something to eat before we went to Strawberry Hill.
When we got off the train, we looked left and looked right and there was pretty much nothing. Just lots of houses. We popped into a local store that told us that the closest place to eat was a Thai restaurant called Sopa (which I could have swore was a Spanish word, not Thai...). The next closest options were about a 15 minute walk in the opposite direction of the house we wanted to tour, so Thai food it was.

The Thai restaurant had a weird schedule where they closed at 3:30 and then reopened at 6:00. We arrived at 5:45, where we could see the owners of the restaurant sitting at a table, presumably having dinner before they had to reopen. They kept looking at us, bewildered that anybody would actually be lined up outside of their restaurant, like we wanted to be the very first in line to eat their food this evening. If only they knew we were on a tight schedule.

Once we got in, the food was actually quite delicious. We were a little nervous to eat there. I had never had Thai food and my mom had only had it once, which was an experience she didn't enjoy. However, she had some pad thai noodles and I had some stir-fried prawns and steamed rice, which turned out to be delicious. We also ventured out to try their Thai banana pancake, which I have pictured below.

Apparently what made the pancake "Thai" was the greenness of it but it just tasted normal. We suspect food coloring.

We finished dinner just in time to head over to the Strawberry Hill mansion for our tour. I was particularly excited for this tour, for one because it was a twilight tour, which makes this Gothic building even more creepy and exciting, as it was originally intended to be, but also because this particular mansion was built and resided in by writer Horace Walpole in the 18th century. Horace Walpole is particularly famous as two things: being the son of Britain's first prime minister, Sir Robert Walpole and writing the first ever Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. I had the pleasure to read this novel this past semester in my literature class and knew that the next time I visited London, I had to go see the place that inspired the novel. The story goes that Horace Walpole awoke one night from a terrible dream that a giant armored fist was bombarding his grand staircase. This put him into a writing frenzy and he spent the rest of the night writing details and ideas that would eventually turn into this book. There are many similarities between Strawberry Hill mansion and the castle (Otranto) that is featured in his book, obviously not by coincidence. Walpole's real masterpiece in life was his gorgeous home. He even wrote a guide book about it, which I received a free copy of during my tour, so that whenever people would visit him, they would notice every little detail and all the effort he put into to making his home a spectacular sight. It resided over 9 acres of beautiful gardens (most of which belong to a local university now) along the River Thames. It truly was a sight to see. I took lots of pictures.

This is the front of Strawberry Hill when we got there and there was still daylight outside

This is the front of it when we were leaving. See how the demeanor changes? Kinda spooky.

This is Horace Walpole himself. He did not display any portraits of himself in his house. Only family members. So this is one of the only likenesses I saw of him during my visit.

This was our favorite room in the whole house. Horace entertained his guests in this room. The design was based off of the queen's dressing chamber in Buckingham Palace. He had a knack for rich and royal design.

There was a lot of beautiful stained glass artwork throughout the house. Horace purchased each little stained glass oval individually and organized them into a larger window collection, like the one you see here, and put them all over the house. He spent an entire year's salary purchasing these tiny ovals. The people restoring the house are attempting to find all of the original stained glass pieces to put back into the house, which is why you see some blank spaces. There was a big sale about 100 years after Horace died where everything in the house, (paintings, furniture, everything) was sold in a grand 28 day sale. Everything was gone and the restoration company is working very hard to find everything and return the mansion to its original state. Only a few rooms have been successfully restored. I hope to return someday in the far future to see what kind of  progress they have made.

This was a great way to put a visual to the things I had been learning about this book throughout my literature class and could not have asked for a better way to top off my learning for the course. When the tour ended, it was 10 p.m., aka bed time. By the time we arrived back at our flat, it was 11. We quickly skyped my dad to check in with things at home, where I had him gather up the animals and put them in front of the camera because I miss my babies, and then we turned into bed, since we had another busy day quickly approaching us in the morning.

Our family Skype session, featuring sweet little Abe