A Beaver Scout at Hampton Court

Some of you may be aware that this past weekend was our wedding anniversary. A smaller number may be aware that it was our twelfth wedding anniversary, which is really quite amazing to me (in a good way, of course). We decided to go out to celebrate, and after much discussion throughout the past week, elected to go to Hampton Court on Saturday. Please note: I am well aware that our anniversary was on Sunday - however, we chose to go on Saturday. 'Nuff said.

Hampton Court, to begin yet another history lesson, is one of the palaces of Henry VIII, and was one of his favourites. It was later modified by William and Mary, as they began to destroy the Tudor construction and replace it with a Baroque building. They were unfortunately unable to complete the rebuild (or perhaps fortunately, depending upon your personal architectural preferences, and/or predilection for historical buildings), and only part of the building is in the Baroque architectural style, while the remainder is Tudor. Nonetheless, it is an interesting place, replete with royal bedrooms, presence chambers, and gardens. We spent the day there on Saturday wandering the grounds, and learning various facts about Henry and the other later occupants. To his credit, Dalton can now name all of Henry's six wives without effort, and which order they married him in, etc.

Hampton Court has a maze, originally built around 1600, which we navigated, and then we walked around the gardens looking at the various layouts. We then went into the castle - where they won't let you take pictures. Still, you can look at the place here. Check out the pictures of the Great Hall, and the carving by Grinling Gibbons. Grinling also did some of the wood carving in St. Paul's and his work is truly extraordinary. Our pictures will be up later on today, hopefully - although just of the outside and the gardens.

As the evening drew in, we decided to look around for a place to eat and ended up at Zizzi's. Admittedly, we initially were drawn in because it wasn't overwhelmingly expensive and it had stuff the kids would eat. However, I can now name Zizzi's as one of my more pleasant dining experiences. We both got good Italian pasta dishes, and the kids shared a bowl of pasta. We also had a bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo - good stuff, if you can find it. The desserts were marvelous - the tiramisu was truly excellent. So that was basically our anniversary dinner. After that, the kids were beat (and so were we, to be honest), and we headed home.

Sunday ended up being a wash. We got on the rail to go in, but apparently someone had fallen on the tracks at Purley, so they shut down the rail. Rather than go into London and get stuck, we took a taxi back home.

Monday night, Dalton became an official Beaver Scout. He now has his little Beaver scarf and all the other necessary accoutrements. He is quite excited about it all. Beaver Scouts is like Cub Scouts, only the ages are slightly different in the UK. They did something with stamps this week, so he now is interested in stamp collecting. I told him we'd go look in the stamp shop here to see what they have. Fortunately, they have the world's largest stamp shop here (so the website says) in Stanley Gibbons. I figure I'll have to take him there to check it out.