Tea and Crumpets

So today we had a very London-y day. It started with high tea at the Kensington Orangery. We all decided to get dressed up to go and I borrowed a dress from Cali and shoes from Ellie. I really have the nicest roommates ever and I looked pretty cute, if I do say so myself.

So this is the mirror that we pass on the way out of our flat every morning. It has been effectionatly named the Vanity Mirror, and you can see why!

So Kensington Palace is in Hyde Park so it was just a little walk over. The Orangery is beautiful and it was really fun.

We didn't actually have tea and crumpets, we had hot chocolate and fruit scones with clotted cream and jam. So everyone has told me that you have to have clotted cream, so I did. It sounds disgusting but it really was good but not what i expected. I thought it would be some kind of whipped cream but its more like really good butter.

So besides being overprice it was a really fun experience.


After tea we went home to get some homework done. boring. but then we went to the National Theater to buy tickets for a show that night. We got our tickets and walked to Borough Market.

It's basically just like the local market. A lot of food, fruits and veggies and flowers. But there was also things that I wouldn't usually see at a market like strange fish and mushrooms.


The best thing was this stand that had hot meat sandwiches. So I had a chicken one and it was one of the best sandwiches I have ever had. The guy making it was really nice to me too and was being really funny so the whole experience was fun.

We ended our Borough Market experience with really good cheesecake. Mine was caramel apple cheesecake.

After that we went back to Camden market so Ellie could get a shirt that she just couldn't get her mind off of. While we were there I found a really cute dress that feels awesome. Anyone who has been shopping with me knows that I have to touch everything as I pass and that's exactly how I found this dress. It felt really soft so I stopped and it was really cute and unbelievably long enough! :) so with my awesome negotiating skills I got him way down to a price I was willing to pay.

After the market we went to the National Theater to see London Road. So we went early and listened to the live entertainment. It was really fun because that is what people do here, and it was a Jazz group and they were pretty good.

The show was really interesting. It was a musical where it was all sung verbatium. So there were a lot of umm's sung which was something I've never heard before. It was a play about the people on London road where back in 2006 5 murders took place. So it was really interesting because it was more of a history than a typical story line of a play. The music for it was amazing. There was a lot of dissonance and really I can't even explain it because it's not like anything I've ever seen before.

It was also an new experience because we bought standing room tickets. So we stood through a whole 2ish hour play, it was not fun considering we had been walking around all day. So this is us sitting on the ground during intermission.

I'm not sure I would recommend this play to anyone but I really enjoyed it. I know that sounds funny but I think it would be very hit or miss. Overall great day.

Thunder storms and Silence

This morning we went to Kew Gardens which is huge. So I'm not usually one for artistic pictures but I really tried with these ones because there were so many beautiful flowers. My favorite thing was the Lilly house which was a greenhouse with water lilies. It had lily pads that were so big I could've sat on them comfortably, I really wanted to try too. So this post is basically just going to be a bunch of the picture I took at the gardens. Some have stories behind them so I'll explain as I go but overall it was just really fun. I spent most of the time with Ashlee and we get a long really well so that was really fun. So here we go:

So the door into the lily house was normal size but the handle was really really low. like to my knee, we thought it was really funny.

So this is me in the lily house. It was the smallest greenhouse, but as you be able to tell from all the pictures of it, It was my favorite.


These are some examples of the HUGE lily pads! these pictures really don't do them justice.




Lots of beautiful lilies!

This was my favorite one!
The next place we went was the rose garden. All the roses were wild roses and they were beautiful. They reminded me of my Grandpa's roses. The most beautiful ones were the yellow ones, so Mom these are for you.


Then we went in another green house and this is what we found!

These plants were so cool and the pictures don't do them justice but they have tiny flowers inside the main part of the flower. I really liked them.

more pretty flowers.

Me at the gardens and on the treetop walk

This was a very cool sculpture thing. It was made all out of sticks/vines.

These flowers won best color in my book. I couldn't really close to them unfortunately but they were the most beautiful deep red.

So funny story about this picture. So I really liked these flowers but from the path they had a really bad background so I umm.....went onto the employee path to get a better picture. It really was just a little hop over and Ashlee kept watch but it was a little thrilling to do especially when one of the employees almost walked by but then turned at the last minute. So so funny, the best part is that the flowers really aren't anything special.

I really liked these birds of paradise because they actually look like birds to me and usually I don't think they do.

This was the Japanese inspired part of the gardens. It was really pretty and the racking of the rock garden was cool even though you can barely see it in these pictures.

The Japanese gardens is also where we met our friend the peacock. It was just walking around and got really close to us, it was cool.

Then it rained. really really really hard! finally we had a proper London rain. It was actually pretty fun to walk around in the rain.
side note: while I was packing my bag today I had a prompting to bring my umbrella. Thankfully I followed it because I didn't take a jacket and I would've been miserable.

So there were Geese ever where and there were a ton of babies, they were really cute!

So this tree was really cool. I loved the flowers on it and it was covered in them. They were really unique and they smelled really good.
Walking through the gardens was really enlightening to me. It was the first time I really understood how an artist or fashion designer or architect could draw inspiration from nature. Like I always understood the concept before but for the first time I really saw these flowers as inspiration not just as pretty flowers. Too bad I'm not an artist.

That was the gardens.

After that we came home, I made a huge lunch and just enjoyed the thunder storm. The thunder was really loud and the lightning lit up the room, it was great.

Tonight we went to see a show called Silence. It was contemporary theater and I don't really know how I felt about it. I'm not going to form any opinions of it until I think about it a little more but for sure it was not what I'm use to. I will talk about it more after we discuss it in class.

So on the way home from the show Ellie had this huge water bottle that she was about 2/3 done with. I told her that if she would chug the rest of it I would give her a candy bar. So despite me almost getting her to spit because we were making her laugh she finished it. It was really funny because she was walking and chugging it, I guess you kinda had to be there.

She also ran to catch the bus to go only one stop further down the street, that made me laugh.
Overall it was a good day and I was happy to have some real London Rain.