A rest day—or at least a half rest day—was definitely called for, at least for myself. And so it was just in time that the kiddos were headed to the Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour Monday afternoon. Henry and I had opted out of this trip highlight when we saw the price tag (although I probably would have enjoyed it). It also required an hour-long tube/train ride, so we had plenty of time to rest and recuperate by ourselves.
But we started off the morning at the lovely Fulham Palace, just a short walk from our Airbnb. The gates to the grounds are in the picture above. There are some gardens, too, with more of the gorgeous roses we've gotten used to seeing and smelling...
It's certainly not as impressive as some of the palaces we were to see later on, but it's still worth visiting, actually free, and easy to access.
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| courtyard entrance |
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| obligatory chapel |
There were also fun activities built in for the kiddos: mainly, looking in all the Palace's rooms for little mice. Here's one tucked into some fine woodwork:
Give these kids a mission, and they are all over it!
After they departed, I had a very welcome nap (when I'm home alone I nap almost every afternoon, but so far in England I'd had none!). But Henry and I couldn't completely shut down the sight-seeing imperative, and took a stroll in our lovely Fulham neighborhood.
The sign shows their next match, which was set to happen after we've left the area. There was all kinds of construction going on around the stadium, possibly involving a new hotel? condos? apartments? built into it, taking advantage of its prime Thames-front location (and apparently doing away with traditional stands on that side of the pitch):
A walk around the grounds finds you at the Thames path, which affords an extremely pleasant way to find your way home. Before you get back to the busy Fulham Palace Road, there's one of the ubiquitous handsome London churches—this one is All Saints Fulham. We got into kind of a dead end in their cemetery, since it was too late for all the gates to be open. But there were still photo opps!
We still had some time before the kids returned from their adventures, and were able to have a nice, quiet dinner on Fulham High Street, and even watch some BBC4 back at the Airbnb. A well-deserved and needed rest day, to save up for more strenuous activities tomorrow.
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| girls in the garden looking forward to Harry Potter |
After they departed, I had a very welcome nap (when I'm home alone I nap almost every afternoon, but so far in England I'd had none!). But Henry and I couldn't completely shut down the sight-seeing imperative, and took a stroll in our lovely Fulham neighborhood.
First stop was the local team's home ground. (Here's a blog post from 2008 when I was actually inside.)
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But there's still plenty of club history on display:
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| read about the Johnny Haynes stands here |
A walk around the grounds finds you at the Thames path, which affords an extremely pleasant way to find your way home. Before you get back to the busy Fulham Palace Road, there's one of the ubiquitous handsome London churches—this one is All Saints Fulham. We got into kind of a dead end in their cemetery, since it was too late for all the gates to be open. But there were still photo opps!
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| serene All Saints cemetery |
We still had some time before the kids returned from their adventures, and were able to have a nice, quiet dinner on Fulham High Street, and even watch some BBC4 back at the Airbnb. A well-deserved and needed rest day, to save up for more strenuous activities tomorrow.
2 comments:
Such cute bike lane barriers. We have ugly white bollards in our town.
At least you have something, most of our lanes are completely naked!
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