We had a nice sleep in this morning and were looking forward to a nice leisurely day! It would be too much to hope that another nice gentleman would be waiting to help us with the tube tickets today, so we decided to buy an Oyster Pass and act like real Londoners. A lovely gal at the train station helped us, and within minutes we had tube passes loaded with some money ( we had no idea how long it would last us, but the girl seemed confident we would get through our day without reloading). It took us a few trips to realize you had to swipe your card going in AND out of the stations, but we eventually got the hang of it!
First order of business was buying our Billy Elliot tickets at the Victoria Palace Theater. (No snafus on the tube ride! We are pros!) Since it was lunch time (yes, we REALLY had a sleep-in) we decided to walk toward the next tube station and find some place unusual/local/outside the box (at least for us). For those of you familiar with dining establishments in England, you will laugh at our choice of Bella Italia. It looked to us like a family owned Italian restaurant, and we were so proud of ourselves for going somewhere "different". Bella Italia, we would discover, is the Olive Garden of England. With VERY few exceptions, we saw a Bella Italia in EVERY town we stopped in. York? yep. Bath? you betcha. Stratford? oh, yes. So much for out of the ordinary!
After lunch, we hopped back on the tube and headed to Kensington. Karen led the way on a scenic tour of the High Street (i.e. she went the wrong direction and ended up in Holland Park instead of at Kensington Palace) and we enjoyed some nice window shopping.
As the top picture shows, we did make it to the palace (yes, that is Karen holding Starbucks) and we took a brief tour. Deb felt it was a little light on Diana related information and references, but it was interesting and got us used to the hand held audio devices that we would get at pretty much every attraction on our tour. (The third picture is of the sunken garden, and the last picture is the orangery, which now holds a cafe.)
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