Hampton Court

This past Wednesday, class was held at Hampton Court. 

We had to make our way on our own and were quite paranoid about being late so we showed up an entire hour early...but the sun was beautiful! 

Hampton Court was originally built for Cardinal Wolsey, chief minister to King Henry VIII when England was still a Catholic country...

Despite his role as a religious man, Wolsey was quite extravagant and lived a lavish lifestyle at Hampton Court. He didn't last long as a Catholic Cardinal though and once Henry VIII broke with Rome by divorcing Catherine of Aragon, Henry took the castle from Wolsey and made it his own.

He made a number of adjustments, including (but not limited to) creating a HUGE banquet hall, covering the walls with tapestries (he ordered 600+ by the end of his life and his collection of commissioned tapestries rivaled the Pope's), tennis courts, pleasure gardens for recreation, a hunting park, a chapel, as well as apartments for every single one of his wives and children.

How pretty are these gardens??

These are the back gardens, beyond which is the hunting park...

We toured around the entire house, walking, talking, and listening from 10am until 4pm with a short break for lunch. 

Here's an inner courtyard

and the interior of the rooms behind those windows

Loved the gargoyles 

and these are friends from my course! 

In other news...this week was so crazy. I stayed up all night Tuesday night to watch the election with Spaniard, Serbian, and Scottish guys at the bar at Goodenough (and found myself explaining the logic behind the electoral college)...until 3:30 in the morning. Woke up at 6:30am to go to Hampton Court (lots of coffee). Thursday night I went to an alumni reception for Christie's Education students from 6-6:30 in south ken and then to mayfair from 7-9 to attend a lecture by Geoffrey Munn, jewelry specialist and expert on Antiques Road Show, at Dartmouth House (ESU headquarters). He spoke about Queen Victoria's jewels and even brought one of her fabulous sapphire and diamond tiaras - incredible! The lecture was done to raise funds for an art history scholarship, the same one of which I am a recipient this year. Afterwards, the hosts (and benefactors) went to dinner at their private club (Hurlingham Club) and invited me along, which was LOVELY (though I was the youngest at the table by about 50 years). Did not get home until midnight because it is on the opposite side of town, which was fine except I had a 25-page object report paper due the next day...and was not done. I fell asleep with all my lights on working on it and woke up at 5am to finish footnotes/bibliography/formatting. Successfully turned it in by 10 and attended lecture and seminar (art philosophy seminar on Friday afternoons...but we do have wine in class - that is a plus). Went straight from there to a gallery opening where I worked from 5-10pm, finally jumped into bed by 11 and been drinking tea, snuggled up, watching Made in Chelsea (my new obsession) and recuperating from this crazy week. Working for the alumni office tomorrow but I will sleep well tonight. 

So that is that.

TGIF