Sunrise, Sunset, and Hampton Court

The view from my seat. On the left, sunset leaving the US and on the right, Sunrise entering the UK

BEFORE YOU READ THIS, CLICK ON TITLE SO ALL IMAGES ARE VISIBLE!!!!

I have officially arrived in London! With the attacks that have been going on I want to let everyone know that I am just fine, everyone on the trip is all good, and we're looking forward to a fantastic 3 weeks! That being said, we will still continue to remain highly aware of our surroundings.

But I'm here, and I'm going to be honest with you, my flight was not great. I was on an 8 hour flight from Chicago to London and I didn't sleep a wink. Leaving at 6:20pm meant that, with the time difference, I'd be arriving at about 8am in London but it would feel like 2am to me. Now, I've never been sick on an airplane before so I was quite surprised when we took off and I felt like I was spinning. I didn't bring any Dramamine with me but I figured it would just go away once we took off and started flying a bit. Nope. The cabin looked and felt like it was spinning for a full 8 hours. I tried to sleep but it just wasn't working out and the dizzy feeling was starting to make me nauseous. I decided to just close my eyes and rest as much as I could until I could get off of the plane. After doing our activities for the day I finally hit the wall. I almost fell asleep at lunch and ended up sleeping on the bus between the restaurant and our housing.

Yes, I took this photo and I'm very proud of i

Even though I was absolutely exhausted, it didn't prevent me from being able to wander around Hampton Court Palace. The beautiful palace owned by King Henry VIII was almost like a maze (it actually had a hedge maze but we got lost enough inside the palace itself). The whole thing is surrounded by beautiful gardens and ponds with ducks, fish, and swans. Inside, it's almost as if the whole thing were a tiny, private village. The king even had his own resident chocolate maker who had a chocolate shop and kitchen basically right outside the king's bedroom. The walls are lined with extravagant tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and magnificent frescos on the ceiling of each grand staircase. We learned that the grand hall in Hampton Court is one of only two remaining places left that Shakespeare performed his own work. We got the opportunity to walk through that room and stand where he did. It was really quite a cool experience. One of the things that I found absolutely fascinating was the fact that there was so much detail put into things that would most likely go unnoticed. Things like engraved door locks, busts high up in the walls of the courtyards and monograms engraved on the corners of the outside of the building overlooking the gardens. It was  quite a spectacular place to visit, I only wish we had more time there as we didn't get to really see everything the palace had to offer.

A view from a peephole cut into a hedge

So even though I'm so completely exhausted, it was still a fantastic way to start out my time in Europe. Cheers to the first day in London!

Xoxo,

Jackey