Memorial Day Weekend 2015 - Hyde Park/Brighton

Matt: So this is the re-kickoff post for me and Kate working to keep a blog whilst (i think they use that here in the U.K.? not totally sure though) we are in the U.K. for the next month and a half or so.

I am new to the blog-o-sphere so I can't promise any special formatting of fancy typefaces, but we will try to use this as a bit of a journal to document our adventures around the UK and France. We might trade off who writes them, but read mine too even though I don't have the natural writing charm Kate does.

Anyway...Memorial Day weekend in the States turned out to be the same weekend as "Spring Bank Holiday" in the UK so we had a long 3-day weekend as well. There was supposed to be a train strike on Monday here so we decided against planning out a great weekend trip and opted to wander around London. Turns out the strike was cancelled so we did sort of a half/half in London and elsewhere.

So Saturday we went to Hyde park in the morning. It's like the central park of London although not quite as large (combined with Kensington Gardens it about 2/3 the size of central park). Anyway, since all of the neighborhood squares and gardens in South Kensington are private, we decided saturday at the park sounded like fun and we could let Hannah run around.

Here are a few of the highlights of the day at the park.

This is just inside the park in front of the Prince Albert Memorial. It's quite large and the actual statue of Albert is all gold. Very impressive. It's interesting because there are smaller statues on the corners and those and the relief sculptures in the larger has items from different cultures and periods. Not totally sure of the significance of it. But...it was pretty interesting. Think honest abe but made in gold .

This is from the flower walk in hyde park. Just a long lane to walk down with lovely flowers. It is really quite well kept and it was pretty lonely so it was super relaxing and quiet pretty much in the center of London.

This is in the Princess Diana Playground. One of the nicest little areas of the parks is this playground where you can only enter with kids and so it is really nice for Hannah to run around and play. She absolutely loved the swings. It was raining and we went under the edge of a building and she didn't understand why we weren't still playing. The rain meant nothing to her. 

In the children's playground there is also this little circle of tiny houses. Hannah is just tall enough that she has to duck her head a bit to get inside. She loves climbing around in them. It started to rain on us a little and so Kate and I climbed in to. It was a of a low ceiling for us but Hannah was pretty excited for us to climb in to her little fort.

So after the park, we grabbed an ice cream thinking Hannah would eat it (she loves chocolate ice cream--takes after me in this respect) but Hannah was too tired to be bothered with Ice Cream and insisted instead on being held constantly. She fell asleep as Kate and I sang the "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "One, Two, Buckle My Shoe" as we walked back through the park.

After a proper nap we decided to wander back out. We went to Notting Hill to wander to Portobello Rd. I am not familiar with the Bed Knobs and Broomsticks song, but Kate tells me they have one about the road so I'll have to re-watch it. There were a few shops and then they stopped after maybe half a block and then turned into residences. It was a little underwhelming to be honest and we thought...hmm...surely this can't be it, and so we followed the people and the street turned into a pop up bazaar. Tons of little shops and knick knack peddlers selling anything you can think up.

I didn't take this picture but it gives a feel for Portobello Rd. It was a little bit late in the afternoon when we went so things were winding down as we walked the market. The turnaround was startlingly quick because as we came back most the shops were nearly taken down. We plan to go back when it's complete madness another day.

Sunday we treated like a lazy day. We didn't/forgot to set our alarm clocks because we (mostly just me) have been waking up really early. I guess I have switched over to London time because we nearly missed all of church. Thankfully sacrament meeting is last and that since we start at 9:20 we made it in time to catch all of the speakers. The talks were quite nice and the missionaries sang. 

We took Sunday nice and easy and lounged around the apartment and watched a little bit of netflix when the wifi would work and took naps and watched Hannah terrorize the apartment when it didn't. I have officially ordered a little 4g wifi hot spot that we should get soon so hopefully we can get some wifi calling and skype sessions going this week. 

Sunday night we were trying to decide what to do on Monday and with the Bank Holiday here we figured it probably was not the best day to go to things like the tower of London for fear of enormous crowds so last minute we decided that an easy trip would be down to the southern coast of England to go to Brighton. It turned out to be a really lovely day trip and worked out really nicely. We were a little unsure of how easy it would be to get the train and such, but we want to explore so we jsut got up, got ready and decided to go. 

Here are some of the highlights.

Hannah was in a really good mood getting ready to leave. She was all smiles. She loves taking showers and since the shower is not separated by a door in the flat whenever somebody takes a shower Hannah wants to take one too. Ironically, the weird shower has been the best working feature of the flat. We have enjoyed nice hot showers every time. If only everything else worked so smoothly.

We grabbed our tickets at Victoria Station which ended up being like a 5 minute tube ride from our apartment and although it was pretty busy it was actually pretty easy to navigate through.

It only took a few minutes to get out of London and into the Country. Lot and lots of people live outside and commute into the city. They have faster trains and things that actually make the commute just about the same length of time. The train was nice, and Hannah is glad that she doesn't have to sit in car seats. Plus it was nice to snack and relax (as much as that is possible with Hannah climbing all over the place).

So here is Brighton. It is quirky and fun. The beach is a pebble beach but it was nice to get out of the city and get some fresh air. There is a pier with rides and tons and tons of little shops along the beach. It was pretty busy but the change of pace from London was refreshing as was the breeze and just soaking up some salty air. It ended up getting quite overcast and chilly in the afternoon but we still really enjoyed it. 

So we got to Brighton and were quite hungry so Kate let me pick a Fish and chips shop. There were tons and without a very good signal and without researching I didn't really have a way to figure out which one to try. We just picked a place that looked busy and nice and it turned out really nice. Line caught cod didn't taste fishy at all and it was really flaky and tender. Very enjoyable. Although we are also learning that the soda in the UK is not nearly as sweet as in the States. 

After wandering around the pier we went to the Royal Pavilion in Brighton. I guess King Henry IV? (you'll have to google it--it was built as a coastal pleasure palace) was made King and was living in Brighton and so he commissioned this palace which is Indian on the outside and Chinese on the inside. It's the only Royal palace that is privately owned. They were not going to use it anymore so they were going to tear it down but the city purchased it for £53000 in the 1850's and it has been a museum ever since. It was so ornate in a few of the rooms. The pictures don't do it justice. A very interesting way to see inside the way some of the Royals thought. 

Here is the music room from the inside. You can't really tell how ornate it is from the pictures. All of the chandeliers have these huge metal dragons. They were very cool. We couldn't take pictures inside so I just had to steal this online. It was a great little building to go through and we really enjoyed wandering around it.

The best way to end a trip is with one of these delicious sweet rolls with chocolate in them in a little french bakery down the street from our flat. It only makes these and little meringues with whipped cream and the rolls are absolutely delicious. I think Kate could eat one every day. We get these and chocolate croissants quite often, I guess to make up for all of the walking.

All in all it was a really nice Memorial Day weekend. We stopped by a memorial in Brighton for soldiers that was fairly simple and straightforward but still quite peaceful. We meant to look up something historical in England to wander to connected to the world wars and our family but didn't have the chance. We will have to look into that better for the next little getaway.