I bought a Royal Day Out ticket package, which included The State Rooms of Buckingham Palace, The Queen’s Gallery of Buckingham Palace, and The Royal Mews.
My first stop was The Queen’s Gallery, in which the special exhibition was Leonard da Vinci: Anatomist. It was incredible. Leonardo spent many many years of his life creating a book on human anatomy. It was incredibly detailed, and much more accurate than anything else available at his time period. He was especially interested in how a baby is formed, and in how the heart pumps blood. In the end, he could not understand either one, since he had advanced so far beyond his time frame, he had no one to work with and think about these things with. Unfortunately for us all, he never published his work and it was not discovered until hundreds of years later. Anatomy had advanced to the same footing he had been on, and so his work was no longer revolutionary.
Leonardo has always fascinated me. He was such a broad genius: art, invention, anatomy, and science, he was incredible in each. Yet his work was not put into practice until much later, and it always makes me a little bit sad.
My next stop was The Royal Mews. I don’t know why it is called that, but in plain English it is the Royal stables. It is there that they keep all the ceremonial carriages, and cars even. It was not very exciting to me, but I’m sure that those who watched the weddings and funerals and coronations throughout the years would find it more interesting.
And finally, I visited Buckingham Palace. It is splendid and magnificent. There was a special exhibition: Diamonds: A Jubilee Celebration while I was there, in honor of Her Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee year. In it I was able to see some of the biggest diamonds in the world, the diamonds created from the Cullinan Diamond, a 530 carat diamond that was shaped into 9 large diamonds and 96 smaller diamonds. I believe that between the diamond exhibitions in The Tower of London, and Buckingham Palace, I saw all of the 9 large diamonds. They are huge and gorgeous.
I was not allowed to take any pictures inside the Palace. I stopped for tea at the tea room on the backside of the Palace so I could say I had tea at Buckingham Palace. Then I walked down the path through a little bit of the gardens of Buckingham Palace: at least the ones open to the public. It was beautiful.