hi guys welcome to another episode of ultimate bucket list
and on today's show i'm here at kensington palace
the home of royals since the 1700s join me as i show you around one of the
royal residences in central london
london is home to three royal residences buckingham palace st james's palace and
this kensington palace which is located in
the largest green space here in central london its most famous
resident was queen victoria but is now the
official london residence of the duke and duchess of cambridge aka
wills and kate and as you can imagine being in a large park space it's pretty
easy to find and it's very well signposted
now you'll wonder if you're in the right place because the front part of the
palace doesn't seem like much to write home
about but when you see the statue of queen
victoria outside you know that you're definitely
in the right place and even though this is the official entrance
for some reason there's a huge queue forming outside that garden over there
this is the entrance to the sunken gardens and
the day before the princes william and harry unveiled the brand new diana
memorial statue and this morning marks the first time
that members of the public actually get to see it
as you can imagine the queue for this is fairly long thank god i got here early
and eventually they actually let us in to see the damn thing
even though the garden itself is very nice and i do like this green walkway
sometimes you'll be elbowing tourists to get photos of the thing
here it is in all of its glory in fact this is about as close as you're ever
going to get to it because the sunken gardens are actually
for the royals only you're only able to walk around the
perimeter of it they've actually cut out windows where
you can actually look in and take pictures of it
now some of you are probably going to say well that doesn't look anything like
diana and you know what i'd probably have to
agree with that but the people who will vehemently
disagree with you are people like this yes there's an army of dedicated diana
super fans who still obsess over her even 25 years
after death this guy right here his name is john
you'll probably see him in the media and the news outlets as being one of the
more vocal diana fans however none
are more fancifully dressed than this gentleman right here
very well dressed today sir
he actually got up at 2 30 in the morning to travel to come and see the
statue so i've got to admire his dedication
i also forgot to mention that you can actually have afternoon tea here
at kensington palace as you can imagine it's not the cheapest thing in the world
but you get treated like royalty quite literally
anyway once you get bored of the diana statue it's time to actually go
into the palace itself and that's actually free of charge to go
inside the actual cue to to kensington palace
is this one right here yay as you can imagine being a royal
residence that's open to the public the cues for this can be massively long
but once you're finally inside there's three
main sections of kensington palace that you can actually see
the first section pertains to the life of one of our most famous queens
queen victoria and as you walk around you'll probably notice that this doesn't
look very palatial in fact it just looks like a very old
colonial home but that's the idea a lot of people
think that royals grow up in fanciful surroundings and yes there
are opulent things on display such as in the jewel room
where you get to see all the tiaras of various princesses
including queen victoria's own tiara but walking around the palace you'll
know just how ordinary some of these rooms
are with every room that you go into you learn a little bit more about queen
victoria you get to see some of her actual
possessions including her doll's house her various toys and her paintings and
you'll actually get to see how she was educated
and some of her earlier works apparently queen victoria even as a child was known
to have an incredibly vile temper and she was forced to live under
completely strict rules that said she was a lady who admired the
arts was very educated and she herself was
known to put on plays and performances and dances
one of the more creative royals that we've ever had
it also describes her very tainted relationship with her own family
and boy the queues are getting ridiculous outside
you'll get to see other things such as the ballroom
and the kent apartments where other members of the royal family have stayed
but no rooms are probably more important in the palace than this one
the privy chamber room this is where at the age of just 16
she was informed that she was now queen of england and this exact table
is where she held her first privy council and there's a complete
reenactment of it here this is the exact table and
chairs that they ward of all sat in and there's various depictions of her
coronation at westminster abbey the two most important things in this
room queen victoria's actual crown and the order of the garter which belong
to her you'll see this in most of the famous
paintings of queen victoria and they're proudly on display in this
room if you're not sure about anything or if
you want to ask any further questions there's usually a helpful member of
staff who've been more than happy to help you out on that one
they're pretty knowledgeable and if you ask them a question they'll probably
know the answer but anyway it's time to walk across to
the king state apartments which is usually where important guests
and other relatives of the royal family generally stay
when they're here at kensington palace and what a staircase
imagine that this is your own private staircase
which is ornately decorated and the paintings around
on the walls and on the ceilings are pretty damn stunning
if you're a photographer this is a pretty cool place to take photos
the first room you'll come across is the king's gallery
this is the collection of artwork that the royal family generally owns
and they're proudly on display in this room and boy
it does look stunning especially the ceiling detail
there is a lot of things to see in here so take your time to take pictures
and absorb it in you'll see queen caroline's closet
before going into the king's drawing room
this grand room is usually where the king entertains his guests
and where they like to gamble and hang out
it's possibly the most social room in the palace
and once again check out the ceiling detail here because it is ornately
decorated various parts of the palace are under
construction such as the coupler room which once again has very nice ceiling
detail but is very much under construction
and the presence chamber where if you're an ordinary member of the public
this is the room where you'll see the king or queen
there's various other rooms that you'll see in the king state apartments before
you enter the queen's state apartments believe it
or not this is a different section of the palace this also comprises of a
queen's drawing room and the queen's bedroom
very little has changed since its last official use
which they put on full display there's plenty of rooms all in a row that you'll
get to see such as the queen's dining room the
queen's closet which doesn't really have much in it and
the queen's gallery which again has various paintings owned
by the royal family but once you've finished in the queen
state apartments you'll be directed down this
staircase decorated in red velvet of course
and you'll be led out to this special exhibition
it's called the royal style exhibition and it showcases some of the famous
designers that make clothing for the royal family
you get to see plenty of dresses mainly made by garrod
royal dressmakers since 1735 and there's various individual pieces
that you'll get to see such as the coronation dress of queen
elizabeth the queen mother and the most famous piece in this
gallery the one that everyone's queuing for
is princess diana's wedding dress complete with this incredibly long train
one of the things that you don't actually see in this video is that the
lace is encrusted with diamonds and there's a
lot of them there's a showcase specifically telling
you how this dress was made and you'll be queuing a while to get a
decent photo of it but once you do it's actually quite a nice dress up
close and personal this various other exhibits such as how
they made her engagement ring how they made her shoes and there's
various other dresses worn by female members of the royal
family here on display so this dress was worn by the queen
mother and this georgian style dress worn by princess margaret
and if you're a fan of that sort of thing there's a shop right at the end of
the exhibition where you can actually buy souvenirs of
stuff like this but anyway you'll be directed back into
the main palace whereby you'll get pointed out to the shop
and the exit but take your time walking there because there's still a lot to see
before you enter the shop ask for the shopping cafe itself well as
you can imagine there's plenty of stuff that you can buy
and not all of it is cheap so bear that in mind if you do want to buy anything
here it's going to cost you a little bit of
money you can even buy your own replica tiara
you know if you wanted to but anyway the exit is through the cafe
outside and once you exit you'll still see that mile long cue to
get in the place boy i'm so glad i came early
as i'm walking past this long line of people i quickly noticed that this film
and camera crews literally everywhere they're basically covering the brand new
diana statue unveiling and once again i'm so glad i got here
early and it's over and done with but whilst you're at kensington palace
you might as well check out kensington gardens
combined with hyde park is the largest green space here
in london and you can literally spend an afternoon walking along this park
there's plenty of things to see such as the flower walk which is decorated in
beautiful flowers the broad walk because well it's pretty
wide and the round pond because it's well
it's round it's very obviously named here in
kensington you'll also see the prince albert
memorial and behind it the royal albert hall
which is the main concert venue here in the city of london
and you'll get to see the serpentine gallery which is a free of charge
art gallery that you can go into i obviously
didn't bother if you cross the street you'll get into hyde park which is
technically a different area than kensington gardens
but the reason why i want you to cross the road and go into hyde park
is to explore the diana memorial fountains
this was built to commemorate princess diana's death
and on a hot day like today it's nice to kind of kick off your shoes
and wade around in this fountain it doesn't seem to be illegal or anything
like that the very security guards on shift don't
mind people walking in this fountain so yeah whilst in rome i guess
on a hot summer's day like today this is actually quite nice
admittedly i'm struggling to see the point in it but yeah other than that
quite nice but overall guys if you are interested in our royal family
i highly recommend that you come to kensington palace once in your life
okay i'm sold what do i need to do well you need to come here to kensington
palace it's situated in central london just outside
kensington gardens and the best way to get here
is either queensway tube station which is to the north
or high street kessington tube station which is to the south
they're both about the same distance away from each other so it's really
really easy to find the cost well it costs about 23 pounds
to access the palace and gardens the princess diana fountain is free and
kensington gardens which is the park space outside of it
is also free as well if you're also looking to do the tower of london and
hampton court palace check out my other videos for
information on that be sure to buy yourself a membership
you get full access for a whole year for about the flat rate fee of 59 pounds
so it definitely saves you a whole bunch of money is there anything else i need
to know yes because of current code regulations
you have to book tickets way way in advance so be sure to book
your tickets right here on the website also they're very twitchy
about photography and videography in certain parts of the palace
particularly the parts pertaining to bits of jewelry
and it's not immediately obvious where you can and can't film so bear that in
mind that you might be approached by staff to
tell you to stop filming and as mentioned many times in the video
you'll be queuing for absolutely everything
you'll be queuing to get in you'll be coming to see the statues you'll be
queueing to get in the shop so be prepared to queue whilst you're
here at kensington palace but overall guys this is worth going to
once in your life especially if you're here in london if
you have enjoyed this episode please be sure to like share and subscribe
comment on the comment section below and if you've got any other bucket list
ideas you know what to do tweet them at me forget enough suggestions i'll go ahead
and do that so guys thank you very much for watching and we'll see you in the next episode
Ninh Ly - www.ninh.co.uk - @NinhLyUK