Buckingham Palace, Harrods, British Museum and Wicked!

Whew.  What a day we had yesterday, Wednesday.  We went into London very early to  be on time for our 10 am tour of Buckingham Palace.  In the summer (August and September usually) they open the elaborate state rooms to the public while the queen is out of town at one of her sumer palaces.   The tour is self-guided with a very good audio guide included in the admission price.  The parts of the palace that we saw were the main ones used for formal entertaining - throne room, ballroom, grand stairway, music room, etc.  The rooms were all incredible decorated - opulent being the main word that comes to mind, but lovely.  

In the ballroom where Prince William and Catherine's wedding reception was held, there was an exhibition about her wedding dress.  There was an interesting video about how it was designed and the very special lace was selected.  The dress and veil were also on display, along with her shoes (who knew there was lace appliqued on them, too) and her earrings.

There was a special  exhibit in the palace of Faberge objects owned by the royal family.  It included all sorts of objects - carvings, note cases, picture frames, and a couple of extraordinary eggs.  The eggs were far and away the most beautiful. 

After leaving the castle and finding lunch at a nearby pub, we tackled seeing Harrods.  It is a most interesting store.  I had no idea that it was so high end, but everything in there seemed to be designer goods and quite expensive.  The food pavilions were amazing, as was the perfumery.  We thoroughly enjoyed wandering around there.  I actually found two things to buy - a keepsake Christmas tree ornament for my collection and a book.  I'd like to go back again before we leave.

Harrods

The escalator areas at Harrods were particularly elaboate.  One was on an Egyptian theme.

From Harrods we hiked over to the British Museum.  Wow - what a place.  The first thing we went to see was THE Rosetta stone.  I had forgotten that it was there.  What a wonderful find that had been, allowing them to unlock the language of ancient hieroglyphics.   The museum is fascinating but overwhelming to me.  I wandered through many of the galleries looking at the mummies, money from the ages,  Grecian urns, Roman statues.  It truly is a museum of human civilization.

Since the British Museum isn't far from Covent Gardens, we walked there to find a quick dinner before going to the theatre.  We found a very good Italian restaurant, but it was anything but quick.  We ended up so rushed at the end that we weren't sure we could make it to the theatre in time.  We ended up taking a taxi as we needed to get across town and the tube would have taken too long.

We did make it in time.  The show we saw was "Wicked" and it was wicked good.  The two leads both had spectacular voices.  The show was extremely entertaining.  We all loved it.  I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.  I understand that it opened in New York this past spring.

A long day but a wonderful one.