Hampton Court Palace and Downtown London

So we took a train out to see where Henry VIII played around with his many, many wives. Our directions were a little faulty, as we didn't realize we needed to take a land train (as opposed to just using the tube) to get there. After about a half hour of wandering around aimlessly and looking like clueless tourists, we eventually got the information we needed to get there. 

It was worth the trouble too. Josie got a million pictures of the place which we will post. The palace was essentially a castle and was rather imposing. It looked more like a place meant to impress rather than offer many comforts for its inhabitants. We listened to the (somewhat cheesy, though informative) audio tour and took in the sights. Out back they had a maze that we thought was going to be pretty easy for us to figure out. We were very wrong. It can be exasperating to find yourself back in the same spot after 5 minutes of walking around.

Our reward for completing the maze? A walk through some very gorgeous gardens. The shrubberies (I don't know if that's what they're called, but I'm calling them that) were extremely well groomed so as to create an awesomely clean feeling to the grounds. The gardens were pretty expansive and we were getting pretty tired and hungry so we hopped back onto the train at this point and jetted back to London.

Our route back to the hostel and food involved walking over Westminster Bridge, right by Big Ben and Parliament. We didn't try to go into either landmark, but viewing them from outside was good enough. They are impressive buildings.

Pictures say much more than words so we will try and get them up as quickly as possible.