Hi Jen

We spent all day at Hampton Court Palace - it was fabulous and you will need a lot of time there to do it justice - don't miss the tudor kitchens they are amazing! And if you fancy trying tudor food it is available in the restaurant. We had the pie and it was fantastic!

The gardens were a treat and are well worth making time for.

We didn't get to Kew Gardens but I would allow heaps of time for that too! There is Kew Palace in the grounds as well and apparently that is delightful.

If you are planning to visit Kew Palace, Kensington Palace, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House and/or The Tower of London, you may want to consider getting a Historic Palaces Pass. We bought a joint annual pass and it cost us less than if we had visited the Tower and Hampton Court Palace alone. We were very impressed at the price, and as it allows multiple entries to each location it is well worth it. We went everywhere on the pass except Kew Palace (ran out of time!). The only thing is if you want to go to Kew Palace you have to buy entry to Kew Gardens first.

If you are interested go to http://www.hrp.org.uk/royalpass.aspx to take a look. There are a lot more passes available now than when we bought ours so you may find something to suit the time you have available

Kensington Palace has a lovely display of Princess Diana's clothes and at the moment there is a exhibition of the Last Debutantes and you get to see the State Apartments too. It is well worth a look. We enjoyed it and spent the afternoon there. It was a lot of fun.

The Banqueting house is quite different and to get the best of it you need to do the audio tour. Without the audio tour it is just a huge room with a groovy ceiling - LOL
However, it is an amazing place and I enjoyed my visit immensely (and being opposite the horse guards and just down from Trafalgar Square it is easy to find!)

Whatever you choose to do I am sure you will have a blast
Enjoy
Jeni

Hi Jeni, thanks for the info on Hampton Court Palace. I'll have to see how I go for time whether I can spend a whole day there. I think time will be my enemy while I'm away, too much to do and not enough time etc etc.

I bought a 3 day London Pass that gets me entry into most of the places I want to see and it includes transport as well. The only drawback that I can see is you can't use the transport till 9.30am.

JenMM

Jeni, thank you for the wonderful tour tale. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Britain is one of the many places I would like to visit. I'm looking forward to your Breakaway tour tale, as that is one we have considered doing.