Kensington Palace: Lived-in Museums of London

Kensington Palace was built in 1605 and is situated on the west side of Hyde Park, a 350-acre green space in the heart of London. In recent years, Kensington Palace has been most famous as the London residence of Prince William, Kate Middleton, and their children, but Prince William and his brother Harry actually grew up here, back when their mother Princess Diana resided at Kensington Palace. 

You might remember Diana as King Charles' first wife, who was wildly popular with the world, but not particularly well-liked by her husband... Even after the marriage dissolved, Diana remained very much in the public eye, making a name for herself and doing good deeds while looking awesome and wearing classy clothes. She died in a tragic car accident after being chased by the paparazzi through the streets of Paris. 

The Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace features a statue of Diana that was commissioned by her sons in 2017 as a tribute to her memory and the impact of her humanitarian work. 

A short 6-minute walk away, you'll find the Diana Memorial Playground which continues to build on the memory of her as a devoted mother and child at heart. I won't lie, it's a pretty kick-ass playground. I mean, who doesn't want to climb around on a jungle-gym replica of a pirate ship? While it's not technically part of Kensington Palace, it's an easy stop to loop in that feels pretty on-brand for a visit to Diana's former home. 

Directly across from the entrance to Kensington Palace is Round Pond, aptly named to help you distinguish it from Serpentine Pond about 15 minutes farther east into Hyde Park. Here, you'll find a lot of swans you're definitely not supposed to feed (per obvious signage) and plenty of people unabashedly feeding the hell out of them. 

Just before you reach The Serpentine (a pond shaped sort of like a snake?), you'll encounter Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain. This looks less like a fountain to me and more like a classy version of a miniature lazy river for your feet. It will be crawling with kids, wet to the waist whether they're wearing swim clothes or not. When it first opened in 2004, several people busted their asses on the slippery stone trying to walk through the fountain. Since its reopening later that summer, people have been gently encouraged to sit on the side of the fountain and cautiously bathe their feet, rather than walk through it. But much like the signs asking people not to feed the swans, the new rules have been more like suggestions that everyone mostly ignores. We let our kids walk through the fountain with everyone else and they lived to see another day-- but I'll be damned if I was gonna get in that slippery foot river and end up on You Tube going face-first through the water like it's a Slip'n'Slide. 

But, I digress...

Inside Kensington Palace, you certainly will not see William and Kate, as this is not their permanent home--more like their "apartment in the city". Besides, there are approximately 50 total residents of the Palace across its numerous apartments, and only designated areas are open to the public. The parts you're allowed to visit spend a good bit of time on Queen Victoria, who I previously knew almost nothing about. 

During our visit, we learned that she became queen when she was just 18 years old and stood roughly five feet tall. One of her dresses from that period is on display (and it's tiny), along with a painting called The First Council of Queen Victoria which shows her at a meeting with a group of important and intimidating British men. The contrast in her age and size compared to everyone else is shocking and makes her seems like a lot more of a bad-ass than she looked toward the end of her life. 

She was a fervent patron of the arts and has a museum named after her and her husband Albert called (not surprisingly) The Victoria and Albert Museum. Consequently, I found hers to be one of the more interesting straight-up museums we visited in London because it's an eclectic collection including more lived-in objects like textiles and jewelry. Samples of Queen Victoria's jewelry are also on display at Kensington Palace, which added some sparkle to the tour.

The older Victoria wasn't particularly progressive in her ideals--she wasn't down with the idea of women voting and she felt like people should stay in their lane with respect to social classes. But her younger years were remarkable for the fact that she was born in Kensington Palace and raised in isolation until she ascended to the throne at 18. The tour of Queen Victoria's apartments showcases some pretty amazing royal dollhouses that put Barbie's shitty little townhouse to shame. 

The nursery is extensive. There's even an area where kids can rummage around through a box of costumes (sharing an untold amount of germs and lice) for an impromptu play in the corner of the room. My kids decided to pass on the dress-up routine, but my oldest definitely flirted with the idea of sharing his own germs as he announced that he might throw up in the middle of a priceless antique nursery without a trash can in sight. We'd just come from eating at Blacklock for Sunday Roast, a delightful British tradition of consuming your weight in meat, gravy, and root vegetables that can easily immobilize a person if you're not careful. Always the eager competitor, he had raced his brother up a spiral staircase from deep in the abyss of our last Tube stop before arriving at Kensington Palace. It took about 60 seconds of me sitting on a bench with him looking green in the corner of the room before one of the Palace helpers came to inquire, ever so politely, but with a look on her face that said, "Pretty please, don't vomit on Queen Victoria's carpet...". Lucky for us, she gave good directions to the nearest bathroom, where we hung out for a few minutes until the urge seemed to pass. Here he is, doing his best to look normal, while staying as motionless as possible.

Thanks to that minor vomit scare, we actually visited Kensington Palace in two installments. We left that day and came back later in the week to stroll through any rooms we'd missed, but we wouldn't have needed that break under normal circumstances. The part of the palace that's open to the public can definitely be seen in an hour or so (if you haven't just raced up a spiral staircase on a full stomach...) Bailing out and then coming back was easy for us because it was so close to our flat. In fact, my favorite aspect of Kensington Palace isn't actually the palace at all. It's the fact that Kensington Palace was just another fun feature of the neighborhood we lived in for our month in London. It wasn't a short walk, to be clear. But it was two turns and a straight shot due north on 4 sets of healthy, capable legs that had grown accustomed to walking about 20,000 steps a day. According to Google Maps, it's exactly 1.0 miles from our former front stoop to the entrance of Kensington Palace, which means Kate Middleton and I were basically neighbors. And if that's true, then every time we took our kids to kick the ball around in front of the Victoria and Albert Memorial, or drank wine by The Serpentine, we were pretty much hanging out in her front yard. Basically. 

In fact, my buddy Kate Middleton's sometimes-front yard (aka, Hyde Park) was quite possibly my favorite place in London. She never did join us for a paddle boat ride on The Serpentine, but it was just as fun without her.