Palatial Play

While Laura and Olivia went to the airport to pick up Aunt Linda and Uncle Bill today, Scott, Grandma Dorothy and the little girls went to Kensington Palace where grandma wanted to tour the palace and the girls wanted to play at the playground. Grandma enjoyed her tour, but I doubt she enjoyed it as much as we did. Although the toys at the playground were a lot more fun than yet another museum, nothing could have been better than the entertainment we manufactured with an 80 pence bag of potato chips. We used it to feed the tame pigeons, starlings and squirrels who quickly surrounded it. The girls loved putting chips on their toes to have them pecked at by pigeons flocking around their legs. Meredith was delighted when a starling fluttered into the air to take a potato chip out of her hand, and the piece do resistance was when Daddy put his hand out with a potato chip between two fingers and three fingers extended, only to have the pigeon roost on it and eat from his hand. It was like Daddy had become St. Francis, or something! Afterwards, we enjoyed tea at the Orangery at the palace, where the little girls were astounded to find oranges actually growing on trees. We finished with a visit to the British Library to show grandma the Gutenberg Bible and the two copies of the Magna Carta housed there with other treasures. What really turned her crank, however, was the collection of musical manuscripts, including the original score by Handel for the Hallelujah Chorus.