A Palace, An historic town, a red car and a trip, Thursday 24th April

 Stepping back in time todays shown by the date on this old pub in Hampton Court.

For something a bit different today we caught the overland rail, to Richmond, then a bus to Kingston on Thames.  An historic place as once it's was the capital of London, and the starting point in the story of Thomas Elston/Robert Jillett, John's 5th great grandfather.  He was tried for stealing from a house in Addington, escaped, took an alias, and escaped to bide some time at Plymouth.

The town is on the Thames, and is a very large, lots of open spaces, and lots of olden day houses intermingled with the more recent blocks of flats.  Maybe it was affected by the bombs in WW2. We collect our home for the next 71 days.

From there we tested out the Tom Tom,  and it better get a bit better, or I need instructions,  as it often lost the signals, but we made it to Hampton Court Palace home of a lot of Kings,  including Henry VIII.  The first hurdle was the parking machine on the road, couldn't work out why it was ringing at us instead of issuing the ticket, turns out it was my phone, with its bagpipe ring tone,  thanks for the tips Lyn.

The gardens are so beautiful, tulips, bluebells, and daffodils which were nearing the end of flowering.

In the restaurant they had the most delicious meal of Pease pudding (mushy peas) gammon (ham) and Yorkshire puddings about double the size we would cook.  We had a coffee and danish, then off we went. The castle has a few different wings, each King seemed to build something for himself, and was burnt at one time. The rooms are dark and hold priceless tapestries, they cover almost every wall, then there are paintings of the Royals and their courtiers. Actors provide a running show depicting different events that occurred with different royal family members.

This was most fascinating it holds more than 2873 rifles used to guard the royals

This is the conservatory where he had orange trees

The plates at the back are replica, the real gold ones are with the Crown Jewels 

A King's throne I set the alarms off when I leaned in to take the shot

 Check out the 24 hour clock

The wine  cellars, adjoin the Royal kitchens

The kitchens fed 600 people a day, goodness knows how they kept the food warm, 75% of the diet was meat, goose and beavers were classed as fish because they came from the water.

Then we set off to drive  home, something I had been dreading, needless to say we were lost, the the drivers here are really something else, no road rules, make them as you want, bicycles everywhere,  they just take delight in cutting across your lanes, but eventually we followed a road, and poor the very long scenic route home, until we suddenly found the London Westfield, after the harrowing drive we had done, it was time to find some flowers to lay at the Wreath ceremony tomorrow, and to buy some mats for the car, as they have none.  What a high end collection of upmarket shops, no Coles and Kmarts in this centre.  We had a look at the Marks and Spencer food hall, where you can buy everything, it looked wonderful.

Check out the display of old Singer sewing machines in the jeans shop

There are heaps of restaurants offering every imaginable food, so we chose to go to Bills, looked pretty good, felt like we were back in South America.

Ready to leave to find our way home,  and thanks to ice cream all over the marble tiled floor, I managed a fall.  Apart from ice cream on my shoes, and my clothes, luckily I was okay, could have been worse, but still had to give my details for the security report, cause I couldn't go until the cleaners arrived and I and the floor were cleaned. Everyone was most helpful.

Took the scenic route back home, through lots of upmarket suburbs, the housing in Holland Park and the parts of Chelsea and Kensington is very impressive.

Last stop was to Rev James Sedgwick home 37 Donaldson Rd, Willesden  about 700 meters from here.

Anzac Day in the morning, some other Aussies are  here they are going to the Dawn Service in Hyde Park.