Kensington Palace

One of the things I love about England is the fact that they have royalty. This is purely for the purpose that it means there are palaces and castles, coat of arms, royal jewels, and really excellent history, which make for amazing movies and mini series. The Young Victoria is one of my absolute favorite movies so I was pretty excited to go to Kensington Palace and see where Victoria grew up. 

I am going to be honest, my expectations were pretty high for Kensington, in fact they were a bit too high. Although I enjoyed the visit, I was less than impressed with all they had to offer. A large majority of the palace is private apartments, so there are only four main sections that are accessible to public. They are the Kings Apartments, the Queens Apartment, and exhibit on Queen Victoria, and a clothing exhibit featuring dresses from the Queen, Princess Margaret, and Princess Diana. 

The was a pretty cool staircase leading to the Kings Apartments. You may recognize it if you have seen the Young Victoria. This staircase however was one of the few really amazing things here.

A lot of the palace was "interactive" meaning you could touch stuff and try things on. Here I am with my friend Rachael as we try our hands at cards.

And here we are trying on period clothing. The room was really really dark though, and the clothing was a hodge podge of sizes, but we tried our best! Do you think we could pass for victorians?

In this photo we are standing at the end of one of the great halls. There were some nice paintings and decorations. For this photo we are trying to look regal, not sure how well it is working...

 What a uniform.

The gardens were quite beautiful for a cold January day. This garden is also featured in The Young Victoria. It is outside the palace though so you don't have to pay to see it. 

This was the view from one of the windows of the Kings Apartments. Hyde Park is not to shabby. 

There is a statue of a young(ish) Victoria outside of the entrance to the palace. This is definitely a more becoming statue of her than the one outside Buckingham.

So all in all it was a fun excursion. Kensington Palace is worth looking at if you are near it, but I am not sure it is worth the cost to go inside.