England Day 6 Post # 2

Hey Folks,

We've been super busy!!! There is a lot wi-fi areas here in England, but they can be a bit titchy.

So, we are taking this time to write you while we have a wide open connection and update you with some photos.

We stayed in London for a couple of days,



(Me in front of the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace)

(Goodbye Big Ben Tower, for now.)



and then off to the West Country. We are staying in a manor based in Gloucestershire.



(On the way to Gloucestershire. For those of you that are fans of The Vicar Of Dibley, you may find this image familiar. It's of the opening scene; though that is shot from a helicopter)


(Manor Born..to someone else)

While in the West Country we are with a collectors' tour. This will be my third time traveling with them. We have a small group of 14, very fun, people. They collect many different items such as: teddybears, dolls, antique jewelry etc...

We have traveled to Whitney - known for antique stores and The Teddy Bears Of Whitney. Look them up! While we were there we happened on a bear made by bear artist Jeannette Werner from BELLINGHAM, WA. Can you believe it?



Plus, we meant to mention that the first news we saw on the BBC was a story about water bottles made from cardboard instead of plastic. The inventor is a student from WWU in Bellingham!

The world is such a small place.

After Whitney, we traveled to Tetbury known for wool, cheese rolling (check it out on the web) and Highgrove Garden - Where Charles and Camilla have one of their homes. Charles (Charlie) owns most of the town, so it's stayed in great shape without building new homes and tearing town the ancient relics. You may know that Charles is into conservation both natural and historical architecture. He has a store in Tetbury called Highgrove Shop. Any purchases there support his charities. He sells only organic free trade products, and locally created products, books on how to save the world etc..

People may visit his gardens, but you'll need to put in a request two years ahead of time. It's not a waiting list, it takes two years for them to do a background check on you and anyone in your party planning on visiting. Then you are notified no earlier than 3 weeks prior to your requested date and they advise you when you can enter and when you must exist the premisis. Once visited you may not return to Highgrove. Crazy, huh.

From the pictures in the shop, it is gorgeous!! So it's probably worth it. We were not allowed to take photographs in the shop...

Please visit the websites:

http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/personalprofiles/residences/highgrove/thegarden/

www.highgroveshop.com




Outside of Tetbury we visited an abbey and i's garden. The gardens are on 5 acres and are very famous or infamous here. The gardens were purchased by billionares that happen to be naturalists (nudists to you and I). The gardens are gorgeous, you just need to know that they may be naked while you are visiting. No such luck (thank god), though a couple of ladies on the tour did try to encourage it.







These pictures just give you a tiny, tiny, taste of what we saw that day.


While we've been walking our sweet buns off, we have been eating well. Before I began traveling to England, I had heard that English Food was horrible. I have never found that to be the case. It's been outstanding if anything.

Even Mr. Hungry thinks so...



Typically when you book a hotel room in England your room rate includes the "English Breakfast Plan". This means you get a full breakfast of whatever is being served. Usually it's an assortment of items like eggs, bacon, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, cereals, yogurts, fruits etc...

Here are some pics of our meal choices. You can see that you can make great choices while traveling abroad. Most moderate restaurants and pubs here will let you "split" meals. Also, as a Weight Watcher you can figure in the more points heavy items and off set them with the 300 miles of walking each day!!



(This is a meal we shared at Harrods. Bruschetta with salad and two old fashioned lemonades)


(Typical Full English. Consists of poached eggs, potatoes, baked beans, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, sometimes Black Pudding etc...)

Healthy choices always offered. Includes very tasty grapefruit slices.


The English even have low-fat, non-fat dairy choices




Heather and Paula in the Harrods Food Halls





Hope you are all well.

We'll update soon.

Paula and Heather

England Day 2

Heather and I decided to take Hyde Park by storm. We walked the circumfrence of The Serpentine ( it's a small lake within the park). It's approximately 3 miles around. This was all before breakfast.

We penciled in Kensington Palace and Harrods for the day.

On our way there we passed the memorial for Prince Albert. Here's a great photo a portion of it.



We arrived at the garden entrance of Kensington Palace. Where they are renovating the sunken garden. Soon there will be a covered walk way around the garden made of grape vines and fruit trees trained to arch over the walkway.



The Sunken Garden.



Kensington Palace has been the home of many of the royals, most recently Princess Diana. They displayed many of her dresses, but it was very dimly lit to protect the fabrics and therefore it was difficult to get any kind of photo. I'm sure they want you to purchase a book in the gift shop :)

This is one of the many painted ceilings in the palace. Unfortunately, the artist's name has escaped me, but he did most of all of the artwork and framing in the palace per King George I's instruction.



Yes, everything is gilded. It's amazing.

Out George's bed chamber is this rose garden. You can also see The Round Pond within Hyde Park.

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King George I liked RED. As you can see from this room. The paintings on the wall are only a few of what he had up during his reign. The walls used to be covered by many small paintings; from floor to ceiling.



After Kensington Palace, Heather and I made our way to Harrod's Department Store. Unfortunately, the pictures of that store are on Heather's camera and they will not upload to my computer. Don't you just love it.

If you get a chance to Google the store, do. It's amazing. Macy's boasts that they are the largest store, but possibly only by a cubic foot, because Harrod's covers a London block and is about 8 floors and we are talking two under ground floors. If Harrods doesn't have it, no one does.

There is an Egyptian stair case (escolators) with pharoh heads hung along the sides. You may notice that the likeness is that of the owner of Harrods. He also placed two sphinx at the bottom of the escolators in honor of the architect and contractor.

There is also a memorial for Diana and Dodi, which includes the wine glasses they used at The Ritz and the engagement ring for Diana (it was huge). Very sad, but people can drop coins into the fountain and it goes to a wonderful charity.

After lunch at Harrods, we decided we could navigate the Victoria and Albert Museum.

There we met - Mr. Hungry.



Doesn't he look great? In the UK you can get away with this kind of nudity. You should see their meeting materials...whoo hoo. Our US headquarters decided to go another direction - Jim Henson anyone?

Both David (sorry to confuse you) and the partial pillar below are "casts" of the originals in Italy. They did these castings for educational purposes. They are immense. I do not know if you can really tell that by these photos.



I thought I'd throw in this picture of Meleager from the sculptures area of V & A. You may notice a familiar site from previous posts....umm can you say greyhound?





That's all for today. We walked 12 miles today. Enough to get some fish and chips and a pint of bitter for dinner!!!

Cheer-e-o

Paula