Tyng Up Loose Ends

In addition to our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, Robert and I spent our last few days in London taking in the neighborhood around the Kensington Hotel where we were staying and revisiting a few sites of particular interest to us.

We enjoyed wandering around Hyde Park and then through Kensington Gardens, one of several enormous public parks in the area. It was fun to watch the families playing and relaxing together on the lawns--the adults sprawled out on blankets and the kids running around them with boundless energy, just like at home. 

Gold plated statue of Prince Albert at Hyde Park

Robert, with Prince Albert in the background

View across the lake at Kensington Gardens

The swans are fatter and healthier here at Kensington Gardens than at Stratford-upon-Avon

Again, the swans, dedicated to Bill

Lake at Kensington Gardens

View across the lawn of Kensington Palace

Walkway through Kensington Gardens

We took a quick tour of the grounds around Kensington Palace and decided to go inside after discovering the sunken garden pictured below, decorated with hundreds of shiny orange orbs of varying sizes. This turned out to be a project left over from the IN TRANSIT Arts Festival that had been on the grounds in July. It was conceived as an interactive activity for the public, in coordination with the Enchanted Palace exhibit, which is also an interactive, tactile experience for the public, who, as they tour the palace, must find  a set of clues in each of the rooms, that will reveal the secrets of the 7 princesses who lived at Kensington throughout its history.  

After completing the Enchanted Princess tour, visitors at the Arts Festival were invited to write their own secrets on paper and fold them inside the glass balls, to be hung throughout the sunken garden. They were left there for future visitors to enjoy and read.  I thought how fragile the glass balls were, and was impressed that they had been entrusted to public hands.  Just as I opened one and unfolded the paper revealing the secret, there came from behind me the sound of a bulb cracking like an egg on the gravel pathway. I turned just in time to see an embarrassed elderly gentleman drop a folded paper on top of the the shards of broken orange glass that were lying on the ground, and duck sheepishly out of the garden.  Secretly, I was relieved that it was not my globe that had fallen, and I replaced it carefully, and did not open any more of them. 

Wouldn't this make a wonderful fund raiser?