Wanderings and Musings: Guess where we went to church on Sunday?

I think we've finally beaten jet lag. We decided to have an easy, relaxed day, so we slept in (yay! we've been waking up pretty early all week...). Since today was supposed to be the nicest of our remaining days, we went to Kensington to see the Palace and gardens. We had breakfast at a crepery

and took a stroll through the museum of science and natural history.

Our favorite part of of it was the building itself and the garden outside.

In the garden was a bee tree. Thankfully, the doors they have on it so that you can seen the bee hive were closed because the queen bee was laying eggs. I was so brave, I stood right by it, though.

Among other things that Dane learned this morning was that holly is actually
a real kind of plant rather than just a plastic Christmas decoration.

Then I decided that Dane had to have the experience of Harrods. This is a giant department store. It covers a whole city block and has a total of 7 floors. (quick side note: there was a breast cancer awareness walk going on, and I've never seen so many people walking around in bike shorts and a bra, men and women alike). I had only been to Harrods once befor, 2 weeks before Christmas when it was a madhouse. Today was still crowded, but not nearly as bad.
I think Dane was skeptical about going and didn't understand why I was taking him to a store. Once we got inside, though, he got it. What I most wanted to show him were the several rooms that make up a sort of gourmet food court, only instead of Sbarro and Hotdog on a Stick, there is an Oyster bar, steakhouse, and seafood grill.

In the deli section, you can order beef Wellington, international delicacies. and one of hundreds of cheeses. There is also a confectionary filled with mounds of truffles and other candies.

Check out the price on these tomatoes in the grocery.

The wine and cigar shop has everything from an £8 merlot to a £295,000 bottling from 1969. No, that is not a typo.

We also had to take a bride trip up to the 4th floor (5th by American reckoning) to the Harry Potter shop in the Toy Kingdom (that's actually what they call it). I showed excellent self control and did not purchase a single thing. Not a sorting hat,

or a Phoenix.

here's a better view of it.

The last part of the store I wantend Dane to see was the crazy Egyptian escalator. This is the ceiling.

This is the opera singer who stands on a balcony and sings opera to customers. Seriously.

And at the bottom is the memorial.

For church today, we attended an Evensong at Westminster Abbey. An Evensong (which we have named our house after) is a service which is sung by the officiant and the choir. Most of the songs are scriptures put to music. There are a few congregational readings and hymns. It was so cool to be at this service in a church that has been standing for 1000 years. There was also a brief sermon, the main message of which was that God desires our attention to be set in him. While the music and liturgy of the service are touching, they are only a means to the end of drawing closer to God. I that it was very appropriate topic for the service and place. An added bonus: we were sitting in Poet's corner during the service. :)

This was our view during lunch.

This is the outside of the abbey, the only part you can photograph.

Afterwards, the weather had turned beautiful again (it had started raining as we had headed into church) so we went to Kensington to walk around. We started at Kensington Palace.

This is where Queen Victoria was born and grew up. It continues to be a residence of the royal family (currently its William and Catherine's London residence). Behind the palace is a lovely gated garden that you can't go in.

Around the garden was this trellis covering that Dane loved.

We spent the next hour walking around the park. We tried to go to the Princess Diana memorial playground, which has equipment based on Peter Pan (like a pirate ship) but you are only allowed to go in if you have a chld with you. So much for that.

Then we sat down in these lawn chairs overlooking the pond.

It was great until a ticket man came over to tell us that we had to pay to use them (that explained why so many of them were empty on such a nice day). It turned out that we were sitting about 5 feet away from a sign that explained the charges, so the ticket man was dubious when we claimed ignorance of how it worked.

It was just as well because we would have fallen asleep had we stayed. I wanted to take Dane to see the Prince Albert memorial, mostly because it's a nostalgic thing for me in that it's one of the first memories I have of England. This thing is massive and gaudy. My memory always downplays it and then when I see it, I remember how ridiculous it is.