Kew Gardens, Oh My!

Since we had tickets for the theatre for Monday night, we wanted a relaxing, stressfree activity near home during the day on Monday.  We decided upon a picnic at Kew Gardens which is just a short bus ride from "home".  After visiting the grocery store and buying goodies, we prepared a lunch and headed off to the garden by bus.   Our exchangers had left us their two annual passes as well as two visitor passes, so we got in for free - a very welcome gift.
The gardens were so much better than any of us had expected.  They were absolutely beautiful!  We had our picnic near the lovely pagoda.

The garden (which is the Royal Botanical Garden) covers 300 acres.  There are beautiful woodland areas, lily ponds, and redwood groves.  There are azalea gardens, rhododendron gardens, and a rose garden. 
There are a number of lovely buildings in the park, included two huge glass greenhouses - one of which was the largest Victorian glasshouse.

The other, called the Palm House, is full of beautiful palms, of course.

Palm House

We were all impressed with the size and variety of the trees and we especially enjoyed climbing up to the tree-top walk-way and going around it.  It was 50+ feet in the air.  There were nice views of the park from there.

We ran out of time before we ran out of interest.  We had strolled only about half of the garden after almost 3 hours but it was time to head home to clean up and go into London to the theatre.  I'm glad we have passes as I would like to go back again before we leave.

We took the train in, picked up our tickets at the box office and then went to a nearby pub for a pint and a snack, planning to eat dinner after the show.   The show we saw was War Horse - possibly THE most amazing theatrical performance I have ever seen.  It was extraordinary.  It was about a boy who volunteers for WWI in order to find his horse who was sold into the war by his father.  It is funny, sad, touching, depressing and the most amazing part were the horses.  They were life-size puppets controlled by 3 people.  They were so life-like you totally forgot they were puppets - seriously!

Wonderful show.

We found a good dinner at a French restaurant in Covent Garden and headed home late.