Hampton Court Palace

Hi all and welcome to another episode of the Findlater's Travel the world. 

This blog we decided to do Hampton Court Palace, I (Mercedes) have been to this palace a few times before (as a kid, with friends etc.) but Kyran had not been and it seemed to be a sore point that I had been here without him. So I finally told him that I would take him, especially as we have just arrived back from visiting the Palace of Versailles and there are so many architectural similarities between the two palaces. Not that you wouldn't expect a lot of similarities between Versailles and a lot of other palaces as it is said Versailles was that Palace that all other palaces were modelled on. 

Below: You can see in the background it isn't near as pretty as Versailles but we will get into why later. 

Lets jump right into this week's Blog!

Hampton Court Palace

This Palace was was built for/by Cardinal Wolsey, who was a favourite of King Henry VIII. 
As the palace started to take shape it was looking very grand, so much so that Wolsey knowing that the King (Henry VIII) was a jealous man had to start saying that he was actually building the Palace for the King - rather then for himself. 
In the end Wolsey fell out of favour with the King and the King took the Palace for himself anyway.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Court_Palace)

The Palace was built out of red brick as it was suppose to be the new "wonder material" of the time which was also then painted with black paint to make the diamond pattern you see below. 

One documentary that I watched seemed to suggest that the red bricks were painted red on top of already being red, the black diamond shapes were painted and then the grout in between the bricks was painted white. 
So essentially the entire wall was painted! It would have been very vibrant and very interesting to look at indeed.

Ok, so lets get into the fun stories about this Palace. Above you see a photo of a fountain with figurines, you also might notice that Kyran seems keen to be drinking from this fountain! 
This was a wine fountain! To be more specific it was a red wine fountain! 
This is something that was set up at special times and you were allowed to drink as much wine as you liked. This leads me to the second photo below where there is a figurine either about to throw up or is currently doing so (I thought that I would get inline to stare at the pavement too!). 

Below is a photo that I stole from the internet of a painting that shows the wine fountain in use including the sick guy in the far right side of the temporary battle castle that was set up for the King. 

Above: The inscription on the wine fountain!
Below: The Initials of Anne Boleyn and King Henry the VIII located in the great Hall.

It seemed to be a thing that once you got married like a love-struck teenager on a note pad, you went about putting all sorts of love symbols in your palace.

It also turns out that when you send your beloved wife to have her head removed from her shoulders that you should also then go about removing all the love symbols from your palace once more. This image below is one that Kyran took and I digitally altered so that you can see it better but this is one of the initials that was missed when they were removing all evidence of Anne Boleyn. There is an "A" and "H" together.

Another thing that is noteworthy in the great hall is the little wooden figurines that were put up in the eves as a sort of warning, to stop gossip in the court, thus they are called eavesdroppers. 

So for your next family get together you know what you need to do! Get a few freaky little statues and stand them around the room to look at the guests so no one can gossip about you while you duck off to the toilet!

Below: An image of the roof of the great hall and I have digitally altered the image so that the little Eavesdroppers might be a little more apparent to you the reader.

I guess I should say a little more about the palace itself. As I previously mentioned about Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry the VIII we should probably move on to William III and Mary II. 

William III and Mary II were married and they were cousins!
William was a dutch prince and Mary an English Princess however they ruled as King and Queen jointly (so one was not more powerful then the other).

William was Protestant and spent a bit of time fighting the Catholic French King Louis XIV (if you remember from our last blog he was the one who built Versailles).

So this is where we get back to Hampton Court Palace. 
William III seemed to want King Louis dead, but on the other hand he thought "That's a nice Palace you have there! (referring to Versailles) I want one like it"

So it was decided that they should start pulling down the existing Hampton court palace and start building a new fancy one like the French have. 
Fortunately or maybe unfortunately, everyone died before the full plan for the palace was fully carried out. So there are parts that are older and other parts that are newer. 

Above: The architectural boarders where the two types of palace styles meet. 
Below Left: A photo from Last weeks blog that was take at the Palace of Versailles
Below Right: The obvious copy and almost paste of the Versailles Grand Canal to Hampton Court.

Above Left: A photo from last week at the Palace of Versailles of the fancy gardens
Above Right: A photo of Hampton Court's fancy gardens

So you can see from the above photos there are a lot of similarities, and not just because  that was the era and that was the fashion but they were deliberately imitated. 

Lets move on to what the palace is like on the inside and have a look.

Below: Some sort of a decorative armoury, all the shapes and patterns are made of guns and swords and other murderous instruments. 

Above Right: is the Orangery, that is a sort of green house where the king would keep his oranges over winter so they wouldn't freeze and die!

Left: One of the statues in the Orangery, of a snake biting a woman's nipple. 
What gets me though is the expression on her face like " Oh man it bit me AGAIN!"

Below: Some of the rooms in the Kings actual living area. 
As the King was required to do everything publicly there were other grander rooms that the king performed all his public activities in ie. Shaving, getting ready for bed, eating, etc. 
And then there were the following smaller less regal rooms with lower ceilings. hidden out the back away from the public.

This is the part of the blog where I have a confession to make: 
This blog was actually published and then somehow corrupted and all that I had written after this disappeared. 
So writing in extreme retrospect I will attempt to remember the rest of the palace one year later. 

Below is a photo of the Hampton Court Astronomical Clock!



























The clock was installed at Hampton court palace in 1540 on the inner side of the gatehouse(visible from the courtyard) 

The clock is 15 feet (4.6 m) in diameter with three separate copper dials revolving at different speeds and displays the following information:

• Hour
• Month
• Day of month
• Position of the sun in the ecliptic
• Twelve signs of the zodiac
• Number of days elapsed since the beginning of the year
• Phases of the moon
• Age of the moon in days
• Hour when the moon crosses the meridian and thus high water at London Bridge.

The latter information was of great importance to those visiting this Thames-side palace from London, as the preferred method of transport at the time was by barge, and at low water London Bridge created dangerous rapids.

The clock was restored in 1711 but in 1831 the astronomical dial were removed, and the mechanism was replaced with that from a clock dating from 1799 from St James's Palace.

In 1879 the astronomical dial was found, and Gillett & Bland manufactured a new clock movement.

The clock was fully restored in 2007 and 2008 by the Cumbria Clock Company in Dacre in time for the 500th anniversary of the accession of King Henry VIII.

For more information: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Court_astronomical_clock

Speaking of Anniversaries as I sit here writing the ending to this blog on the 25th of 
January 2019 I have had a notification pop up to let me know that today is the Anniversary
of the second wedding of King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (The first wedding was in private)

Below: This is a photo of the ceiling in one of the arches

Below: Us just hanging out in the palace.

But the better point I should make here is that you may notice that we are wearing fancy looking green robes. 
This was actually a cool optional feature to the palace visit. When you go to pick up your audio guides they had a rack of these King Henry VIII era robes that you could take and wear as you walked around the palace. 
On a practical note it was a cold day and we were under-dressed it would seem, so the robes kept us warm as we walked around the grounds.   

I would also like to take this opportunity to add a retrospective comment. 

As you may or may not know I have been getting into "period" clothing from the Victorian times forward. I actually am not adhering to any particular era but am picking the bits and pieces that I like from each fashion style. 
The point I would like to make here is that I have no idea how the English people went from  15 layers of clothing (I may be exaggerating) to a mini skirt and a tank top in the middle of winter. 

I have always been a cold person, but since I have started wearing the corset, petticoats, neckerchiefs etc. I have noticed that I am so nice and warm and toasty and that the cold doesn't bother me at all. 

Back to the Palace though and I can appreciate the clothing that they wore keeping in mind the cold temperatures of the palace in the winters. There were fires I know, but not everywhere!

Here are some more rooms and features that we encountered throughout the palace.

Above: A photos of the wine cellar, look at the size of these barrels!! 

Well this is where I start to forget what else we got up to a year ago. But the following photo prompts me to remember mention the Hampton Court Maze. 

This is something that I remember from when I was 12 and we came to visit the palace. 
I also remember that we were here in the summer and there were activities for the children and we (my brother and sister) ended up participating in 'Fool School'  where I remember that they had stilts for the kids to learn to walk on. 

Us country hillbilly kids just picked it up straight away and made all the other kids look like fools hehehe. 

Back to the Maze...
I remember it being bigger but that is probably because I was much smaller. It was the first time I had seen a hedge maze as a 12 year old kid, so it was pivotal that I take Kyran to see the maze. I think it was his first time too!

Below: So here we are we found our way into the centre of the maze where there is a little information and frame that you can take a photo in!

Well folks that is it for this blog. 
I must say that my motivation for dredging up this corrupted blog and finishing it is because I have recently had the opportunity to mention Hampton Court Palace in one of my upcoming blogs and I wanted to have this one to refer back to. 

So I hope that you have enjoyed reading it and keep an eye out for my next blogs!

I'd rather live in a cave with a view of a palace than live in a palace with a view of a cave. 
- Karl Pilkington -

Versailles, Belgium, Netherlands and Germany

Hi all, 
Welcome to another blog with the Findlaters as we travel to different places around the world. I hope you're joining us after reading the first part of this journey which can be found at the link below as this journey is the Findlaters + Sarah (A cousin that has come to visit all the way from Australia) and we are currently half way through our journey.

http://findlatertravels.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/new-year-new-adventures.html

Just so that you can picture how this trip went the map below shows our entire trip, including what happened in Part 1. At this point in our journey we are at the last green dot down in France and will be heading up to Belgium (Yellow Dots), across to Maastricht (brown dot) and then down to Stuttgart (Orange dot) and then a long drive back home to catch the ferry back across the channel from Dunkirk to Dover.







We pick up our Journey at the Palace of Versailles. 

First things are first - you can't go to France without talking about their pastries so for breakfast in the morning Ratty decided to try a proper Chocolate Eclair at the Angelina restaurant/cafe in the palace itself. Full disclosure it was Ratty and Sarah that tried the Eclair.

So after breakfast at the palace we headed off to see the hard conditions that the royalty at the time of King Louis XIV  to Louis XVI had to endure. 

Above: The map of the Palace of Versailles, and the general route that we took in our wanderings around the palace grounds.  Green blob is the main palace, purple blob is the Grand Trianon (a small palace), the pink blob is where the Petit Trianon (A chateau) and the Queen's Hamlet are. 


A really short summary about this palace is that Versailles was the seat of political power in the Kingdom of France from 1682, when King Louis XIV moved the royal court from Paris, until the royal family was forced to return to the capital in October 1789, within three months after the beginning of the French Revolution. 
If I had to summarize this palace I would say that it was so lavish that even the details have details. 

Under Louis XIV, the whole senior nobility were 'pressured' to spend large amounts of time at Versailles, as a form of political control.


I (Mercedes) had been to this palace before as a teenager and the one thing that I remembered about the palace was the chandeliers! To 17 year old me they were big and shiny and that was my big take away. This trip was more for the benefit of Sarah and Kyran and I got to relive the enormity of the palace by the looks on their faces as we entered each room. 

Above: The three of us with the Hall of Mirrors in the background. 

Fun Fact: Versailles was to be the "showcase" of France, so all materials that went into the construction and decoration of Versailles were manufactured in France. 
As a result the mirrors used in the decoration of the Hall of Mirrors were made in France. 
It is important to know that Venice in the 17th century had the monopoly on the manufacture of mirrors, Colbert (the finance minister) succeeded in enticing a number of artisans from Venice to make the mirrors for Versailles. However, owing to Venetian proprietary claims on the technology of mirror manufacture, the Venetian government ordered the assassination of the artisans to keep the secrets proprietary to the Venetian Republic.To meet the demands for decorating and furnishing Versailles, Colbert nationalised the tapestry factory owned by the Gobelin family, to become the Manufacture royale des Gobelins.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Versailles)

Above Left: The Royal Chapel of Versailles
Above Right: Statue of King Louis XIV
Below: Examples of the decorations that could be found in most of the rooms in the palace

 After being guided through the palace you are a funneled out to the side of the palace where you have the option of either going home, or adventuring into the palace gardens. 
Obviously we had to go and explore the palace gardens, so the following photos are all from the gardens around Versailles. 

Above: This is one of the very well maintained gardens that you will see just as you enter the gardens from the Palace.

Below: Latona’s fountain - It illustrates the story of Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, protecting her children from the insults of the peasants of Lycia and pleading with Jupiter to avenge her. The god obliges by turning the inhabitants of Lycia into frogs and lizards.

The following are some of the photos that we took while walking around the 800 hectare gardens with over 200,000 trees, 50 fountains and 620 water jets (turned off for winter mostly).

Above: The love Monument for more information see http://en.chateauversailles.fr/discover/estate/estate-trianon/english-gardens#the-love-monument

Below: One of the buildings in the Queen's Hamlet

Fun Fact: The Queen's Hamlet was created by Marie-Antoinette, and it's a model village around an artificial Lake. The Queen used the hamlet as a place for relaxing walks, or to host small gatherings. The hamlet was also a functioning farm, something that the Queen insisted upon, and thus it was also served and educational role for the royal children.

If is not apparent yet, it was very cold day: there was wind,rain and humidity! Somehow we managed to time our outdoor adventures very well so that the rain fell as we were in the palace or on one occasion arrived at an undercover gazebo area just as a big rain storm hit.

The image above shows three very cold tourist! But also further in the background you can see a grass patch followed but a very wide and long channel. Well in order to go and see The Grand Trianon (A mini-palace) we had to walk half way down the channel and then turn right. 

Fun Fact: The Grand Channel as it is known is 1500 meters long and 62 meters wide and was a venue for boating parties. 
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardens_of_Versailles)

When all was said and done at the end of the day my Fitbit had recorded 20,775 steps for that day. So yes we were cold and we were tired! But it was a very nice place to visit, and I would like to come back again in the summer to see the full beauty of the gardens when they are not so naked and even take two days to see the place properly and take full advantage of the immense details and history that surrounds Versailles.

The following photos are from the Grand Trianon:

It is here that I would like to interject on the above photo and ask: at which point do you say "I'm tired i'm going to bed, but you fellows can keep playing cards, i'll be over there"? If I was the Queen I would have said "I'm going to bed bugger off". I just can't really imagine a scenario where you would be in bed and every one else just socializing all around you!

I believe that this brings us to the end of our adventures in the Palace and grounds of Versailles. It has been hard to summarize such grandeur and opulence into such a small (or not so small) part of this blog, but alas the adventure continues and we must move on!

In the two seconds that we had to take from our busy tour as I was at risk of Kyran and Sarah starting a Coup on me as I had hardly given them any time to eat, or in fact anything to eat, we managed to stop by a french supermarket and see what the French eat.
In case it is not clear by the photos YES that is 3 varieties of snails and sea urchins, we didn't see any frogs legs though!

The following day it was time to head towards Maastricht where we had to leave Sarah and Ratty for her studies but we tried to catch as many sights as we could along the way.

Below: First on our way was the monument at Waterloo. This might be familiar to you as a song by ABBA and yes this is where Napoleon did surrender. 

Fun Fact: When Napoleon surrendered at Waterloo he had already been the first Emperor of the French and abdicated as Emperor where he was exiled to the Island of Elba near Rome. He then escaped the island and took control of France for a second time and raised a new army and went back to war. At the battle of Waterloo he lost to the mixed-European and British coalition forces, where he again surrendered and this time was exiled to another island Saint Helena which is out in the South Atlantic ocean. If that isn't some Captain Jack Sparrow adventure I don't know what is (Pirates of the Caribbean reference).

I guess here is as good a place as any to put a homage to the way that my family traveled when we were young. I mean traveling with four children and both parents around the world was not easy nor cheap so this is how we learned to eat while traveling. 

Bread and tomatoes, if we were lucky there was cheese or chips! but so that Kyran and Sarah could have the 'full experience' I made them the good old travel food of the family!
I feel that I might have let them have food that was too gourmet! A toasted sort of crouton bread with a Spanish style garlic rubbed on it + tomatoes +hummus + chips + grilled peppers/capsicum + asparagus. So perhaps a little more than what we had as kids, but as I mentioned before I was at risk of a mutiny so I needed to sweeten them up again.

Next up was the Atomium it is a landmark building in Brussels, originally constructed for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair (Expo '58). It is located on the Heysel Plateau, where the exhibition took place. It is now a museum. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomium) 

This was a quick stop as we were now running late to get Sarah to her induction, so alas we did not get to go into the Atomium but like the Eiffel tower it was impressive all on its own. From the shear size and the fact that people can go up in those spheres and that there is escalators between them. Also I forgot to mention that the Atomium is actually a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times!

Next up was the goodbyes to Sarah once we arrived in Maastricht. It was a quick good bye as we had to head another 5 hours drive to Germany to visit some old friends of Kyran and I from university/post-university. 

We headed down to Stuttgart and arrived at ~9pm, we had a few drinks and caught up on life. 

The next day we all decided to head off and see if we could take a hike in the Black Forest somewhere. First up as a stop in this little town called Calw for the coffee enthusiasts to get their fix, and see the super-cute medieval style buildings everywhere. 
Below: It is also where I tried my first proper German Pretzel, it was good so 10 out of 10 would do again!




Below: Picture below some of the old style buildings. 

We went to the local tourist information center in the town and they suggested we go up to the Sommerberg in Bad Wildbad to get a good look at the Schwarzwald ("Black Forest") with the tree-top observatory there called the Baumwipfelpfad. 

Fun Fact: The black forest was almost completely cleared during the medieval times for fuel and building material, potash and charcoal. Later, Spruce trees replaced Fir trees and Beech trees because Spruce were faster growing. Now they have a more biodiverse flora with Silver Fir, common Beech, and Spruce. Nowhere else in Germany are there such distinct forest communities left as in the Black Forest.

The Black Forest is in the south-western part of Germany, and you can see the mountain ranges and the curly mist in the background.

We approached the observation tower. It's nearly 40 meters high with an epic slide down the middle, but while we were there the slide was closed. Overall, the tree-top walk that lead to this area was pretty interactive. There were activity stations spaced along the walk. At one station there was a bird feeder hanging off a tree, where we managed to take a photo of this cute red squirrel eating sunflower seeds. 

Once we had seen the Black Forest and spent time with our friends, it was time to get going as we had to catch the ferry the next day at 12 o'clock. The only problem was, that Dunkirk was a solid 7 hour road trip away! So we drove until 11pm and managed to get a hotel right near the ferry terminal in Dunkirk, along the "Grande Synthe" area.

Funny story: After a day at the Black Forest with rain.. more rain.. and cold, and sitting in the car on our journey with our sub-par car which doesn't have a working heater.. we slowly deteriorated through the phases of hypothermia and had to rely on one disposable heat pack (typically for putting in your shoes) - where Kyran had one stuck on his leg and alternate hands to keep warm, and poor me (normally colder than a frog's bum) had the second one trying to alternate between both hands and feet and latter on stealing Kyran's one and using what was left of his at the same time! We also had the coats that we were wearing but they were still soaking wet so they were of little use.   Not being able to stand the cold and possible hunger any longer, we found the closest supermarket and decided to get some food to enable us to handle our life and the rest of the drive back towards the ferry terminal. 

The photo below is of the meal we had that night at a truck stop, after stopping at a Lidl (like an Aldi) for supplies on the way up through Germany. This is where I decided that if the Bar Tender on the Titanic didn't freeze to death from being drunk, then perhaps a pair of fluffy socks and a small bottle of wine would help stave off the cold. I'm here to tell you that yes indeed alcohol does warm the blood and did managed to keep me alive till I got to the Hotel and could have a warm shower and be human again! Now I know I promised a funny story, but I live in the hopes that this will be funnier as time goes on because at the time I thought that "this is where I die!"

So I guess this is a reminder to away pack warm, have a car that the heater works in and know that we don't eat like kings on the road, but the food we eat is still better then most restaurants! 

Well we made it to the ferry with plenty of time the next morning - they even checked our boot for possible human trafficking! (At least I think that is what they were looking for). We cross the channel and made it home by mid-day on saturday and spent the rest of the day sleeping. 

Below: All the cars on the ferry

Well all in all was a big trip and we are all glad to be home. The trip really ignited a thirst for our knowledge of history - not that we didn't have it before! However having to be informed about each place that we went to see started to relate closely with all the other places we visited.
This leads us to the next blog where we adventured to Hampton Court Palace back in England where Henry VIII was a main character, and this palace shows similarities to the Palace of Versailles but we will leave the details for the next blog!

Thanks again for reading and following along on our adventures, this adventure was made possible due to the generosity of one of our readers! We would like to take the time to thank you for your contributions and we hope that you enjoyed reading about our adventures as much as we enjoyed having them. 

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