Day 30

It's after 11:30 here and I'm tired, so I'm just going to put up my Hampton Court pictures and some commentary, and I'll do a better description of the trip tomorrow.

These were demonstration pies baked in Henry VIII's kitchens. Surprisingly, for the Tudors, pies were more of a food delivery system than a food in their own right. When presented with a pie, a medieval or Tudor person would peel off the top crust, eat the filling, and then throw the pastry away: making the pie dough, in effect, a Styrofoam box.

Oooh, the ghosts of Henry VIII and one of his footmen wandering the halls. In actuality, bad historical re-enactors. I think I'd rather have encountered the ghosts.

William II's Chamber of the Guards was decorated with incredible amounts of weaponry, all laid out in intricate patterns like a form of wallpaper. It helped to establish both his own military might, as William was a soldier before anything else, and his wealth, by buying so many expensive weapons and using them for decoration.

For Rachel: you remember the story about Catherine Howard's ghost running screaming down the hallways? This is the hallway her ghost is said to haunt. Also in this hallway, which was part of Henry VIII's apartments, were paintings. One, commissioned and owned by the King himself, shows the four authors of the Gospels stoning the Pope to death in gory detail: obviously not much love lost between Catholics and Protestants at the time.

And this is the roof of Henry VIII's grand hall, where he held all of his banquets, masques, and other lavish events. The King was very fond of masquerades, but threw fits if anybody acted as though they knew it was him. So even though there was only one person the well-dressed, obese man with the leg sore could be, the courtiers were required to act astounded when the hero of the masque's story inevitably turned out to be the King. Henry was also not fond of appearing weak, and so when he had to attend a dance wearing slippers because of an injury to his foot, all of the other courtiers came in slippers as well.

As Mel Brooks says, "It's good to be the king."