Hampton Court

If anyone doubted that I am a twue pwincess, here is the pwoof sorry proof ... although I was sleeping in the chambermaid's room.

Hampton Court Palace would be a pretty cool place to visit anyway, but when the nice guard asks you for a ticket and you whip out a card with the queen's coat of arms and he says 'Oh yes of course madam, thank you', well then you know you're not in Kansas any more.

From the moment I arrived at the gate on Friday night and the guard there, who I'd been told would be expecting me, said 'yes, we're always expecting young ladies like you' (it was dark, people) and I walked up the drive under a clear starry sky and a full moon ... it was magic. I got lost in the maze (for about five minutes. I seemed to have an intuitive sense of the thing, alas.) I oohed and aahed over the frescoed ceiling and splendid tapestries of William III's state apartments. I bought a postcard.

Our apartment was in Fish Court, over the old Office of the Pastry, part of Henry VIII's new kitchens built in the 1520s. It had a generous 3 bedrooms. It looks out over a courtyard on one side, and a lane on the other, both part of the service area for the palace itself. The Embroiderers' Guild is housed diagonally across the courtyard, visible from our kitchen window. I am tossing up whether to cancel my appointment there on my last morning in London (Tues 4th), might be logistically too stressful.

We had friends of Mum and Dad's come to stay on the Sunday night, and I cooked us a dinner of roast chicken with bacon, apricot and barberry stuffing, gravy, slow-cooked flat mushrooms with blue cheese and cream, jardinière vegetables and roast potatoes, followed by pears poached in spiced red wine syrup with Aztec-spiced chocolate sauce. As we say in my family, in our very politically correct way - I wonder what the poor people are doing?

I am now in Ravenna, and the early mist has burned off but all I've seen of the town is the railway station, my hotel room and this internet cafe, so more tomorrow.