Living like royals at Hampton Court Palace!

Ok, Ok, as we have already discussed, I am a history geek. And one of my favorite time periods is England's Tudor age, specifically Henry 8 so obviously we had to hit up Hampton Court Palace! It's only a two hour drive from us and was relatively easy.

So much history was made here! From this palace in 1530, Henry 8 sent the first letter to the Pope threatening to break from the church (Henry 8 created the Church of England during his reign), his third wife Queen Jane Seymour died here during childbirth, he divorced his wife, Ann of Cleaves here, he marries his fifth wife Catherine Howard here and she gets crowned queen here as well. Henry 8 also married his sixth wife, Kateryn Parr in the castle. And a ton of other kings have history here too. Shakespeare performed for James 1 here, Sir Christopher Wren creates a new portion of palace here for Queen Mary 2 and King William 3rd and so much more! It's just hundreds of years worth of history so there is just so much to see!

The Tudor section

After arriving, we headed to King Henry 8's Great Hall first. The walls were full of tapestries that were over 500 years old, they were so well preserved we couldn't believe it. It is so detailed and beautiful.

This palace is HUGE! Whenever we go somewhere, we take the motto of "run fast, turn left" and this palace went much the same way. So next we found ourselves in Henry 8's apartments! If that's not cool, I don't know what is. We also got to see the royal chapel (no pictures allowed) where King Henry 8 married a few wives and attended church. We got to stand where the King and Queen sat! There are so many rooms for each king like multiple bedrooms, multiple dining rooms, withdrawing rooms, entertainment rooms, and so many more. Anyways, everywhere you looked, it was decorated over the top. There were priceless paintings and decorations everywhere. During this time inside, we saw King Henry 8's apartments and the Georgian Court (there were 3 King Georges that originally can from Hanover. They weren't so popular. Also, they were extremely disinterested in English politics which is a large reason why now the royals have no power, they passed it off to Prime Minister). It was interesting to see how decorations differed between the kings. The best part about the Georgians area?! SCRATCH AND SNIFF MAP.

zoomed in from picture above

Giant room with giant paintings!

You think I was kidding about giant room and paintings?

There were so many ceilings painted this beautifully!!

King George 1

Not a bad bedroom..

After a lot of time spent indoors, we headed outside, to make sure we wouldn't see any rain (which didn't appear until our car-ride home!). Lee's single goal was to do the hedge maze so we went there first. It's the oldest hedge maze in the world! There weren't too many people there so we had some fun. Again, we went with the motto "run fast, turn left" and for the most part it worked out for us. Lee led the way and only hit a few dead ends. Much too soon we finished the maze and Lee told me that he had never even been in a corn maze!! I bet you can guess what I am going to find this autumn... But Lee had a great time with that. After the maze, we wandered around the gardens. The gardens are GIGANTIC! I would have loved to have had brought a picnic and find a secluded section because they're everywhere. It was so cool, everywhere you turned there was a secret garden hiding somewhere that was beautiful. You have to go while the flowers are blooming because the colors are so vibrant and make everything so much better!

Crazy trees!

Crazy bush?

in the maze

Where to go?!

such a good sport!

Where's the sun when you need it!

We headed back inside and first checked out King William 3's apartments (Also known as William of Orange). He had a huge impact on the political system here (I took a class on English history so I can talk a lot about all these kings!). Again, everything was extremely decadent.

Another beautifully painting ceiling/walls

Art with weapons

Eventually we made our way over the the Tudor Kitchens where they were doing cooking demonstrations! That was cool to actually see how they cooked back in that age!

I think that has been used a few times...

Also, throughout the day, they have characters roaming the grounds and palace. I saw King George 1 and many other people walking around. And no big deal or anything but I got a picture with KING HENRY 8!! I timidly went up (not sure if I'm supposed to curtsey or something...) and asked if I could get a photo (he was also with his wife, Queen Catherine, I believe). He looked at me and said "With those bright eyes and flashy smile, how could I say no?" or something like that. Obviously the King loves me. So I'll just leave you with that ;)