Kensington Palace

We got an early start today, so by the time we got to our hotel in the west end of London (near Notting Hill), we still had a good amount of the day left. Our hotel was only a 10 minute walk from Kensington Palace and gardens, so we thought we ought to give the namesake of our California hometown a good tour. Of course it's London, so we got treated to rain right off... good day for palace tours. Kensington Palace is not very deserving of the 'palace' moniker. OK, so it has this really ornate gate with gold leaf out front...


...but beyond that it looks more like some kind asylum for the mentally ill. Apparently it allowed the royalty to escape the horrible London smog (from all that coal burning) over 300 years ago by purchasing this place out a few miles to the West. Major royalty only inhabited the place for a few years before it was turned over to a bunch of minor dukes, duchesses, princes and princesses, who lived here, leading typically bizarre and often miserable royal lives, right through to Diana who lived here until her death. The funny thing about this palace is that it currently isn't presented in the typical English museum quality way, restored to it's former royal look. Instead, it seems that a bunch of artists got hold of it and went crazy with a kind of flair that would have the former residents flipping in their tombs. They shuffled things around, created various moods with lighting and haunted sounds of voices from the past and turned it into a sort of a funhouse of artifacts, old and new, with a story line about the Palace and it's former inhabitants. They warn you when you show up that it's not the typical 'restored to it's former glory' type of palace. Then they make a game out of figuring out who each of the princesses were who inhabited the place, which we were supposed to write down on our 'dance cards'. This seemed kinda lame and my expectations were in the gutter. As we started up the stairs, which were 'artistically' scrawled with child-like graffiti, it seemed like this was going to be a waste of an afternoon, not to mention my 12 quid. But the whole thing was rescued by highly knowledgeable docents in costume and in character, stationed around the palace, and who were able to answer all manner of questions at length, telling endless stories about almost anyone in the royal family and any of the paintings and sculptures which turned out to be quite interesting, especially when you learned their backstories. It was actually quite fun and enlightening and I even had my Elizabeths, Marys, Annes and Victorias all straight for a bit.