Last Day in London

For our last day in London we took the train out of London for a quick trip to the  Hampton Court Palace.  Rail/tube prices in London are based on the distance you travel so I had pre purchased a 7 day 3 zone unlimited ride pass which allowed us to ride the underground/tube or bus to Wimbledon and pretty much everywhere we wanted to go in London.  Hampton Court was out in zone 6 but fortunately the transfer was from a zone 3 station which we could ride to. From.  There I asked the ticketing agent for the best promotional price which was only an extra £18 for the 4 of us round trip.  This was still much cheaper than purchasing a 7 day 6 zone pass.

Hampton Court was a second palace for Henry VIII.  It was a nice castle with huge surrounding ground and a maze.  We went through most of the rooms and the maze of course and headed back to town as had another stop before our evening event.

Our London Pass included 24 hour access to the Thames river boat line.  The boat stops at various places along the river so we got on at the Westminister pier and rode it all the way to Grenwich and back.  That was a long ride but very educational and neat to see the various sites from a different perspective. It was still raining off and on but we sat outside for the best views.
The cruise took a little longer than expected so we didn’t have enough time to get back to our apartment to change before our tickets to Wicked.  We had already seen Wicked in Seattle but we wanted to see a show we knew we would enjoy in London.  Plus we were able to take advantage some special promotions for the boys tickets, aka as free, so it made the show extra enjoyable. Actually I was amazed how much better the performance was in London.  The performers had better voices and/or the acoustics at the Victoria Apollo Theatre were superior or both.

We didn’t get back to the apartment till 11:30p and we still had to pack and find a hotel for our stop the next evening.