I'm moving here
Woke up got fancy and went to Kensington Palace!! Holy Kensington! It is by far my favorite thing I've done since I've been here. It was pretty much all about Queen Victoria's and Albert's love story because they resided at the palace. They had nine children. So we were walking down one of the halls and asked a tour guide and he literally told us everything about Victoria. Know how earlier I said Elizabeth I was my favorite royal? JK! It's Victoria. Hands down. Here are some fun facts (I'm sure everyone will just read ALL of them)
:Victoria favored her "pretty" children. She made one of her not so pretty daughters her personal secretary and forbade her to get married for years. She let her "pretty" daughter become an artist, even though it wasn't socially acceptable for woman to do that. Her daughter sculpted the statue of Victoria that is in front of the palace:
:She was absolutely in love with Albert (I'm in love with their love) and could hardly function when he died. That's when Mr. Brown, her horseman came in. He gave her a will to live again. People speculated that they were together, hence the movie title "Mrs. Brown.":
:Both Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, are great great grandchildren of Victoria:
:Victoria's granddaughter, Alexander, married Tsar Nicholas of Russia. That means Victoria was the great grandma to Anastasia:
:Victoria had hemophilia and passed it down through her family. Her great grandson, Alexi, had hemophilia and that is the reason the royal family of Russia brought in Rasputin:
:Victoria blamed her eldest son, Edward, for the death of Albert. Edward was a way at military camp and had an affair with a prostitute. Albert rode out to camp on a very cold night, and when we returned to Kensington, he got into bed, never got out and died 18 days later:
:She married all of her children off to different royals, so basically every royal family in Europe are descendants of Victoria (hence why the Queen and her husband are related):
:And so many more, but I won't bore you...:
Our next stop in the palace was the Royal Fashion exhibit. It was amazing. My eyes welled up with tears haha! There were dresses from the Queen and Princess Margaret and Princess Diana! They were enchanting and it was so cool to see the styles change over the years.
my favorite quote from the exhibit
my favorite dress
just a weeee bit obsessed
greetings from my home
I wanted to buy these.... but they weren't for sale
pretty friends in pretty places
After the palace we napped on the grass outside of it (not very royal but whatever) and then headed to the Thames for an afternoon tea boat ride! So we show up to the pier (in a huff and puff because we thought we were going to be late) and the boats not even there. We were just waiting on the pier, looking out for other people in our group, when I hear a very quiet announcement saying "this is not a drill, evacuate immediately." What? Then it came on realllly loud and everyone began evacuating. Apparently there was a gun threat or something. I was a little bit scared because we were right next to the Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, which are both so famous and could be targets for bombers, but everything ended fine and we were able to get back on and have some lovely sammies, macaroons and diet coke. The views from the cruise were amazing.
After we went to Ben's Cookies (because obviously the riverboat food wasn't enough...) and then went to go see Once. If you are in London...GO SEE ONCE. It was amazing. All the orchestra members were parts of the play and were on stage. We were front row too! It was unreal. You may have heard of the song "Falling Slowly." Well it's from that play, and the play is also a movie. But we loved it and still haven't stopped talking about it.
Saturday we went to Stratford on Avon butttt I don't have any pictures/stories to tell. Oops.
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