September 29, 2008

I've been late getting this up since we went to Kew Gardens a week ago, but here it is:

So today we went down to London to take a tour of Buckingham Palace's State Rooms, which was pretty amazing. No photos allowed in there though. :) It was cool to see how the palace works and how they set up for State dinners, and what all goes into it. From there we headed on to Kew Gardens to meet up with new friends of ours who have recently moved to London from the US to work with Polish people here. They previously lived in Poland 9 years. We've so enjoyed meeting them and getting to know them. Kew Gardens is a famous botanical garden- one of the most famous I think in all of Europe. It has 3 or 4 huge conservatory houses, and we didn't even see half of them or half of the place. Definitely worth going back there in my opinion. We spent a lot of time in the Palm House, where the huge palm trees are. It's about 150 years old I think.

The biggest palm in the Palm House.

George on the stairs up to the viewing platform in the Palm House. You can look down on the palms and other tropical plants.

The gardens themselves are amazing- they have outdoor exhibits on loads of different types of trees and things.

This is a cork oak, the bark of which is used for corks in wine bottles and things like that.

They have this new special exhibit where you walk up to this high platform and look around and see what it's like at tree canopy height. I loved the view but the platform didn't feel stable enough for my taste. :)

It was a long day but all in all we enjoyed the time with our friends and being able to see some of London. We're trying to see some of the major London sights while we're here. I am getting to feel like I know the city pretty well, although with such a big city there's always something new to do I guess. The museums are next up on our list, and some of them allow photos so I'll share them whenever we get down there.