London day 5

This is the day I went to Hampton Court. Unfortunately I didn’t get very good directions on how to get out there off the internet before I left. I found a transportation website which would give me routes to where I was going, but I had checked “fastest” route available and it seemed to give me some questionable advice. Sure, it might save me three minutes to make all these weird train and bus connections, but if I would have just taken the most direct route, it would have gotten me right there. After getting several conflicting opinions on how to best get there, I followed the map I saw in one of the tube stations and took the tube to Wimbledon to catch a train. At Wimbledon the right train was terribly delayed, so I took another one that had been suggested by the internet. Unfortunately, that was rather shoddy advice and it took me a little bit past the palace. The conductor advised me to take another train BACK up the line quite a ways to catch the train that went to the Hampton Court station. So I asked the man at the ticket booth, and a nice lady buying a ticket told me to just go across the street and catch the bus. Which is what I did. This is all so much easier in English than it would be in French… Anyway when the bus came a charming little old English woman started talking to me and took me under her wing and got me to Hampton Court, which was incidentally the first stop on the bus.
Hampton Court was really fascinating, it was Cardinal Woolsey’s palace before Henry VIII took it away from him. It doesn’t have much furniture in it, just a huge palace of empty rooms, for the most part. But it is just huge, with interesting rooms and history. The gardens are gorgeous, and extensive.





My ride out took two hours, my ride back took one. Jeff worked late but I was able to read a book I was into.