V-Day at the Palace

So, what do you do on Valentine’s Day. Go visit a palace! We decided to go visit Kensington Palace which is about a 10–15-minute walk from the Daniel House. We have walked past it and around it many times since arriving here. The first time we saw it was when we did a brief visit to the Daneil House in March 2022 after Abigial’s wedding.

The tour is self-guided with the help of an AV device that will guide you through the rooms. You do not get to see any of the current areas being used, but we did get to see three main areas. One section had many rooms from the 1690’s and the time period of Queen Mary II and her husband King William III. The next section was from the 1700’s delt with the time period of King George II and his wife Queen Caroline. Finally, we walked through rooms from the 1800’s surrounding Queen Victoria from her childhood that she spent growing up in Kensington before becoming Queen when she then moved to Buckingham Palace.

The palace was first a large two-story home in 1689 when William and Mary bought it to get outside of London and away from the Thames and the Whitehall Palace. The first part of the castle we toured included a very large staircase and huge rooms with very high ceilings. All of these rooms were for international and public visitors to the castle. These rooms also were more from the 1700’s and King George’s time period.

These rooms were very different then Queen Mary II’s state apartments that were her and King William’s private area. These rooms had much lower ceilings and would have been filled with many more personal belongings and would only accommodate a small group of people.

This was true also for the rooms dealing with Queen Victoria’s childhood rooms. These rooms were much more plan in their decorations and simple in their style. She and her mother had a rough life. Victoria’s father died when she was only 8 months old, and her mother was allowed to stay in the palace. At the time she was fifth in line to become the monarch, but just as she turned 18, she suddenly was be crowned Queen of England due to many uncles who could not get their act together. Her and her mother also grew apart before she became queen and as soon as she did, she move to Buckingham Palace, even before it was finished being remodeled after decades of misuse.