The proper stacking of rocks (which were being dicks)

The morning started out pleasant enough, waking early when Jeff the hostel mate left. Which wasn’t too bad as it meant I had the shower first so I didn’t have to stand in a bunch of water from the slow draining pipes. Then a breakfast downstairs whilst blogging until Jess came down and joined me. She’s a cool person, its good to hang out with her in the morning. She’s off to a palace an hour away while I decided to stick to Kensington Palace, which is where Prince William and his wife will shortly settle into. It was neat in that they explained the different progression of rooms. In early days, the farther into the palace you went, the higher your social status and likelihood you would get a position or boon from the royal family. The neat art exhibits shown how the different rulers lived there and their history. So less gallery art and more cool small exhibits. One especially cool thing they did was they had a number of exhibits where an old phonograph was attached and they played gossip whispers that were common in the house of lords at that time.

One sad note was it chronicled the fall of the house of Stewart. The last queen had 18 children, all of which died before the age of 5 except Prince William. He died 3 days after his 11th birthday and had been the hope of the nation from due to his cleverness and interest in military matters. This left a hole as they then no longer had anyone capable of being the royal family. Parliament set strict Protestant based rules and they went in search of a suitable king, eventually starting the line for King George the First.

After the palace I strolled through the rain in the palace gardens connected to Hyde park. They have a beautiful Italian Gardens that King Albert made for Queen Victoria and was eventually rebuilt by Tiffany’s of New York. I took a quick lunch break at this point across the park from the street in a hotel. Caesar salad, wild mushroom linguini, a pint of Strongarm cider, some Navy Rum (delicious), and chocolate cake and I’m ready to head back to Hyde Park.

This is the first example from this artist called Rock on Top of Another Rock, prior to his other famous works Rock Next to Another Rock and his masterpiece Oh For Fuck’s Sake, It’s Just a Goddamn Rock…

Hyde park was huge. Not as big as Forest Park, but few places are in terms of city parks. It is likely the biggest front lawn for a place I’ve ever seen. Large ponds, some big enough for boats and requiring bridges. I walked down to the corner of the park to see the Wellington Arch and then Buckingham palace. The arch was cool, but Buckingham is hidden behind tall brick walls with razor wire on the top. It appears more than God saves the queen.

I headed down to the metro and headed back to the hostel. My feet were getting blistered so I decided to hunker down with a book and let my feet heal a bit after walking all day. I ended up sleeping til about 10pm, waking up to take my antibiotic, and then falling right back down to sleep.

Tomorrow, washing clothes, riding on top of some touristy thing, and wandering about.