May 1 was a Bank Holiday in England & we spent the day at Hampton Court Palace.

51.4036° N, 0.3378° W

This is the palace where Henry VIII spent a significant portion of his reign with Anne Boleyn & Jane Seymour.

The palace is quite a distance from the city center & it took us about an hour on the subway & connecting train to get there – but it was well worth the effort.

Today the palace offers a unique experience to visitors through a group of actors who portray the King, Ann Boleyn, Cromwell & Jane Seymour and several others in a series of scenes in the very rooms in the palace where the actual people could have had the same interactions & conversations.

It really enhanced our experience & our appreciation of the significant history of this palace & the people who lived there.

Following the vignettes we toured many rooms in the palace.

There were several throne rooms on display

Some were used more often than others……

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talk about having a soft seat……

Next we took a guided tour of the palace gardens.

The tour focused more on the history of the gardens rather than on the plantings. Our guide was excellent & the gardens were spectacular.

Our guide told us that the gardening staff are focused on maintaining the gardens with the same types of plants that were used when the monarchs were in residence.

We even got a “behind the scenes” tour of some of the greenhouses where plants for the gardens are grown from seed.

Cheers!