Clapp Radical Sabbatical

I’m pretty sure I was supposed to be born royal, rich and in a different era because I have a slight obsession with formal dinners, place settings and anything royal. In fact our wedding was set in a way that you felt almost transported back to another era and attending a ball from one of Jane Austen’s novels. So of course we had to make a stop by Kensington Palace – Andrew was NOT excited by this but his interest piqued a little when we saw the beautiful White Garden – planted that way in memory of the 20th year anniversary of Princess Diana’s passing. And I have to admit although the state rooms and bedrooms of Queen Mary and William III were quite impressive the best part of our tour was the Diana: Her Fashion Her Story Exhibit which just happened to be going on while we were there.

Princess Di’s Pearl Dress – she wore it to Hong Kong and the White Garden

After a delicious Indian food lunch (apparently London has some great Indian food) we went to the Tower Bridge which is commonly confused as the London Bridge and we took the lift up to the top, walked across the glass floor and explored the engine room (I almost had to drag Drew out of there – he was enthralled). Then we took a river boat cruise toward Big Ben and finally walked through St. James gardens until we found the Wellington Arch. We could have actually done a lot more but we stumbled across this little thing called the London Marathon and there were hoards of spectators. As a runner it was kinda neat to see – there were millions of spectators and a lot brought picnics and most were drinking. It really looked like a fun atmosphere to race in but apparently there aren’t any time limits like the races I’ve been in cause we saw people crossing the finish line until 5 pm and I’m sure there were some even later. Due to the streets being blocked off and all the spectators we had to walk around A LOT so much so that our feet required a cocktail at the end of the day.

The following day we took an organized tour to Windsor Castle, the Roman baths in Bath, and Stonehenge. The state rooms in Windsor Castle are absolutely astounding, unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take pictures in there. Drew enjoyed it too because there were several ‘man caves’ as he called them which were really guard rooms that displayed coats of armor and various weaponry from different eras. Bath was a super cute city with the majority of the structures made out of yellowish lime stone. The Roman baths were really interesting too – it’s amazing to see what spectacular structures could be built before modern technology. The natural hot spring water is said to have special properties to keep you looking young – Drew had some and I did not (I’m allergic to sulfur and it definitely had quite a bit of it) – does he look younger?

Roman baths

To the Castle!

Windsor

The culmination of the tour was Stonehenge which was really incredible. It’s amazing that after all the years we still don’t really know what it was for, except that it lines up with the summer solstice. Something I did not know about it is that there were 56 holes in a circle within the circular earth berm each with a skeleton of a man in them. I know a lot of people say it has something to do with aliens but we didn’t see any while we were there, nor did we get any ‘funny feelings’ as they say some do.