Friday (London)…

The day began with a chilly breeze and gray overcast skies. Sounds like late September in London, doesn’t it? Warm eggs and hot lattes quickly energized us for another long day of walking!

Good fortune gave us one more day during the Buckingham Palace summer opening AND our free return visit from our tickets yesterday. So, we plotted a fun course through Mayfair, happening by the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian embassies. We quickly crossed quiet Green Park, accompanied only by a few dog walkers and early-start tourists.

We snagged timed entry tickets (free…yay!) with just a short wait. The trick with these same day tickets was to arrive just after the ticket booth opened at 9:00am. While we waited, we walked next door to the Queen’s Gallery and secured tickets for the afternoon. Our day was set!

Buckingham Palace: Take Two. For this visit, we decided to forgo the audio guide and just take in the rooms visually. The architecture and detail is so beautiful. Designed to impress…and it surely does. Just staring at the carved ceilings could occupy the mind for hours…each carving is ornate, purposeful, and symbolic. We also spent extra time in the long central gallery of paintings. It’s a relatively small collection (compared with a museum), but each piece is carefully selected and cared for. Another chance for coffee and snacks on the garden terrace.

The Queen’s Gallery houses various temporary exhibits through the year, exploring elements from the Royal Collection. The current exhibit–“In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion”–examined the importance and evolution of clothing in court life. What made this exhibit so fascinating was its approach to describing portraits not for the scene or subject, but for the significance of the fashion elements displayed in the painting. Elements such as use of specific color, the extravagance of specific fabrics, and even the significance of hats. It was an inventive, immersive way to explore a set of paintings and we simply loved it.

For our evening walk, we returned to Hyde Park. We settled into canvas deck chairs at the sexy Serpentine Gin Bar…we had wine…healthy pours of Tempranillo and Nero reds. Six-or-so green parakeets zipped across the sky. Swans and geese set off slow ripples on the otherwise placid Serpentine, catching the brilliant orange sky. A Jack Russell terrier with ears perked looked longingly at the birds. With its last colorful gasps, the sun lit up lines of lacey clouds in brilliant orange against the darkening blue sky.

Hyde Park slipped quickly into night, its thick trees blocking out the light of the city, leaving only the occasional lamppost to light its pathways. Bikes and walkers continue to emerge from and disappear back into darkness. We pointed ourselves towards the far end of the park, and took a long, leisurely walk along the Serpentine and then into the quiet, moist grassy, lawns of Hyde Park. At the end of the Park, Kensington Palace sat dark; its manicured gardens slept free of visitors.

After attempting a foolish Friday night drop-in to a popular spot we had visited previously with Jeanne and Sarah, we found a warm table at the lively Prince of Wales pub in Kensington. A couple of rounds of fresh draughts and tasty fish and chips. Pittsburgh Steelers fans in their black and gold crowded in for a pint. A friendly couple from New Zealand told us stories of being on their way home from a three-month trip.

We took the long long walk back along the north side of the Park. Bayswater Road provided yet another glimpse of life in this wonderful city. We slept soundly, knowing that tomorrow we were off to the English countryside!