so today we did buckingham palace, something I have never done before!! we bought the 'royal day out' ticket so we got three parts to our tour. we first started in the queens gallery which is currently showing an exhibit on leonardo da vinci. i thought this would be kind of boring and i wanted to go straight to the state rooms but this exhibit was AMAZING. it was basically 60 illustrations taken straight out of an unpublished anatomical study done by da vinci that was attained by the english crown in the 1700s. who knows why. basically da vinci is my new hero. he was a genius. it was absolutely unreal. usually i breeze through museums and just read the plaques for the stuff that looks interesting to me, but i literally looked and read every single piece. it was that cool.
next was the royal mews, which i love! good memories there with my mom and my sister. the royal mews are the old stables that are a part of buckingham palace. they don't hold horses there anymore (i did see two today, though!) but it still smells like horses and i LOVE it. makes me miss pootah. but now these stables are the home of the state carriages and the cars. so freaking cool. the best part is the gold state carriage they use for coronation ceremonies. it is so intense. its funny in the little info thing it says that most of the royal family actually doesn't like riding around in it because it's notoriously bumpy. i will let the pictures do most of the talking here. so cool. definitely a must see, and its cool because most people dont know about it so it's usually pretty empty. 
next was the state rooms. if i were to say i was stoked to go to this it would be an understatement. they get you all pumped up before you go in so that was fun. i definitely wasn't disappointed. the word i would use to describe Buckingham is magnificent. i know it sounds cheesy but i was seriously just in awe the whole time, it was so beautiful. and it wasn't like super gaudy like Versailles.. not that versailles isn't beautiful. something about it just bugs me. probably the fact that it's french. but wow i just loved it. my very favorite part was the grand staircase. its just like the cliche grand staircases in the movies with a landing in the middle... i couldn't help but picture myself in a big princess dress going to a ball or something. why am i not a princess again?! hahah nahh just kidding. but it was so cool. mostly we saw drawing rooms, the ballroom, and some galleries that holds paintings and sculptures. it's like a museum within itself. it would be insane to know how much all the artwork is worth in there.
for the queens jubilee there is a special exhibit within buckingham. it's called 'diamonds' (get it? cause it's the diamond jubilee... hehe) and it's basically an extension of the crown jewels. i felt like this was even cooler though because it's the jewelry the queen actually wears. it was amazing. her brooches, her tiaras, earrings, necklaces... it was so so so cool. obviously i couldn't take pictures in the palace or in the diamonds in exhibit so you have to see it to believe it. 
after that i headed back to notting hill and went to eat. the traffic was pretty crazy because the triathlon was going on in Hyde Park. i literally felt like I was in the middle of war zone because there were press helicopters everywhere, it was intense. but anyways back to lunch because that's significantly more exciting. i had a ham, brie and cranberry baguette, as well as my little muesli pot. then i headed back to the centre and wrote my paper for english! yikesss. i also started packing up my carry on with all the clothes i've bought. double yikes. hahah.
then it was time for dinner and theatre! me and chelsea went to taza and got schwarma. nom nom nom. then it was our last night out at the theatre.. tonight was war horse! it was AMAZING. war horse is a big deal in london because it's super unique. it's obviously focused on the story of the horse and the horse is a wooden puppet operated by three people. it sounds weird but it is so well done. you forget that you are watching three people manipulate a wooden puppet and feel like you are watching a real horse on stage. chelsea also cried twice. so yeah. it's legit. so cool, definitely a must see. all in all today was amazing! hopefully it will make up for tomorrow because i'm basically locking myself in here to study and i'm super not stoked for that. yee-ha.
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