Week 4: Two Palaces

This weekend I was able to go inside 2 palaces: Buckingham Palace and the palace at Brighton.  Of course a visit to London is not complete without a visit to Buckingham Palace, where you can ogle at and attempt to get as close as you can to the lives of royals.  Lucky for us, Buckingham Palace is open to visitors in the summer while the Queen and royal family is away on vacation at one of her many other palaces and castles.  We knew our time was limited before Buckingham Palace would close for the season, but somehow we failed to think about how many other people would want to visit as well.  We just made our way over on a Saturday afternoon and expected to be able to waltz in, but the guards informed us that tickets were booked up and we needed to get there early in the morning for a chance.  Thankfully, someone in line had 2 extra tickets for friends who weren’t able to make it.  Otherwise, there was a good chance we would have missed our chance for the season.

This year, the special exhibition was on the Queen’s diamonds, in line with everything being Diamond Jubilee crazy.  That was one of my favorite parts of the tour.  Other things that I found interesting was that there are secret (or perhaps not so secret if you’re lucky enough to already live in the palace) trap doors for the Queen to get around the building faster.  Makes sense because Buckingham Palace is huge, and is not only where the Queen lives but also where she works.  Everything in the palace has amazing history behind it but everything is fully functional for the royals to use.  I think I would be paranoid about damaging an artifact every time I tried to do simple things like eat dinner or sit in a chair.

My roommate and I in front of Buckingham Palace, with a view of the gardens.

On Sunday I went on the day trip to Brighton beach.  We had a tour of the palace there, and it was interesting to see two palaces in a row because I could notice and appreciate the differences.  This one had an Asian influence from the architecture to the décor.  The city of Brighton was also very cute and the beach was beautiful despite the bad weather.

Brighton Palace