6. Weekend in London at the Mandarin Oriental - Podcast

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In Podcast Episode 6 I’m in London for a winter weekend meeting up with friends and staying at the fabulous Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge. As I travelled with my teenage daughter you’ll hear some recommendations from friends who live in London on the things that children will enjoy, as well as suggestions from the Concierge at the Mandarin Oriental on London attractions that his guests enjoy close to the hotel.

I’ll be telling you about our Asian style dinner at the Park restaurant, the luxurious suite in which we stayed overlooking the park and our experiences shopping with teenagers in London. If you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe to my podcast series on I-tunes to be updated with new podcasts. If you are a subscriber to the blog you’ll already receive podcast updates as well as all my other articles.

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Dinner in the Park Restaurant

Orangery at Kensington Palace

Show Notes

In the podcast today you’ll hear;

• Recommendations from Daisy (aged 10) and Lola (aged who live in London on things that children will enjoy. They love the Tate Modern gallery , The Sea-life Aquarium on the South Bank , The Science Museum in South Kensington, Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park, the Princess Diana Memorial Playground in Hyde Park and seeing shows like Sister Act, War Horse, Hairspray, Billy Elliott and Mary Poppins.
• About our Prince of Wales suite in the Mandarin Oriental  which was extremely luxurious in classical English style, overlooking Hyde Park.
• Shopping for teenagers in the huge fashion store, Top Shop, at Oxford Circus.
• Admiring the hampers at the food emporium Fortnum and Masons, with a hamper for every occasion from a gift of English produce to Graduation hampers to tuck boxes to send to your children at boarding school.
• Eating in the Park Restaurant at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, where they serve top class Asian food and I ate Crab Cakes and Thai Green Curry and finished with African Amber tea.
• A chat with Senior Concierge, Mike Selcuk at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park Hotel, about the things that he recommends for his international guests from the Middle East, US and the UK. He suggests the following activities;
• In Hyde Park behind the hotel you can find many activities for families, such as boating on the Serpentine lake, horseriding, feeding the ducks and the Princess Diana Memorial Playground and the Memorial Fountain.
• Across the park you’ll find Kensington Palace where some of Princess Diana’s dresses are on display and you can take tea in the Orangery.
• For shopping there’s Harrods and Harvey Nichols and further on are the three museums of South Kensington, as well as the Royal Albert Hall where you can have a tour or attend a concert.
• In the other direction is Buckingham Palace which is open in the summer when the Queen is on holiday, and where the Changing of the Guards takes place daily in summer.
• Families may enjoy the London Eye, the Crown Jewels at the Tower of London and Madame Tussauds and taking the hop on hop off bus around the sights of London.
• There is a Duck Tour which is a combination of bus and boat that goes on the river that you can take by the river near Waterloo Station and the Cabinet War rooms used by Winston Churchill in the war.
• Miko also often makes reservations for his quests to see popular shows like Oliver, Lion King, Mama Mia, Billy Elliot and the new show Legally Blonde as well as getting reservations to the top London restaurants.
• The music on the podcast today was Venus as a girl by Andy McKee and Travelogue by George Wood on MusicAlley.com
• I received a complimentary stay at the Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park Hotel, in order to write an article for Kiwi Collection.com - read my review of the Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park, London here.

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04 Visiting the Munich Christmas Markets
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To Kensington Palace and tea at the Orangery - in London

Last weekend I was in London to meet up with an old friend, and we decided to take a look around Kensington Palace, just off Kensingon High Street and on the edge of Kensington Gardens. Kensington Palace has been a home to members of the Royal family since 1689 when the palace was purchased by King William III and Queen Mary II as a refuge with clean air for the King’s health and more recently, it was home to Queen Victoria and the late Princess Diana.

Although I was brought up in London, I’m finding that now when I return, there are so many wonderful places that never even came onto my radar while I lived there and this is one of them. I enjoy playing at being a tourist in my home town and I recommend Kensington Palace for the beautiful State apartments which are manageable in size and brought to life by the different exhibitions you can see there. Even though the day was freezing, the Palace and the park surrounding it had a very peaceful atmosphere, away from the bustle of shopping in Kensington nearby.

If you enjoy clothes and fashion, you’ll be in for a treat, as the first room you see contains a cabinet with a number of dresses that Princess Diana wore on state occasions, many of them instantly recognisable from the press photos you’ll have seen of her wearing them. The dresses were very simply displayed and I wished that they might have shown a few photographs of the Princess wearing them, rather than having to look at the books in the gift shop to find out how they looked when she wore them. Although the dresses were beautiful we soon realised that it was the Princess who brought them to life with her natural sparkle and personality.

Entrance Hall of Kensington Palace

Kings gallery at Kensington Palace

There is normally the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection on display but unfortunately this was closed when we visited as was the small exhibition about The Last Debutantes which promised to be interesting. We walked around the state rooms, which were beautifully painted and decorated in the style of the 17th centrury when the Palace was home to King William and Queen Anne. Many of the rooms were quite small and cosy and laid out as if ready for a game of cards or a quiet read by the fire for the King or Queen wanting some privacy from the bustle of court.

Later we passed through the apartments used by Queen Victoria then she was growing up with her mother the Duchess of Kent, including her bedroom from which she was awoken on 20 June 1837 to be told that her uncle, King William IV had died and that she was now Queen.

As we walked on through the apartments, we came across a lady in costume standing by the window and as she was obviously waiting to tell us about the Palace, we approached to find that she was in fact Sarah, Countess of Marlbrough. She told us that her mistress Mary was the sister of the Queen, that they were the best of friends and waiting for King William III to die so that her mistress would be Queen. Sarah, Countess of Marlbrough married her husband John Churchill for love and partly due to her influence, he was given the title Duke of Marlbrough after his success at the Battle of Blenheim. But in 1710 she and Queen Mary had a terrible quarrel at Kensington Palace and never met again.

In reality, we were talking to Annie, one of many re-enactors in the Royal Palaces, who had just completed her PHD studying the food and society of this period. She also sometimes works at Hampton Court and was so enthusiastic about the history of the Palace and the period that it really brought it to life for us, more than reading a guidebook could do. Annie even explained to us the intricacies of the clothes she was wearing and enlightened us on the differences between the corsets worn in this era to the more curvy ones worn by the Victorians. As a mother with a little girl approached we stood aside, thinking that the daughter was going to find out more about this interesting character in costume. But all she asked was where the bathrooms were - what a missed opportunity! Later Annie told us that the most common questions she was asked were ‘Where are the bathrooms’, and ‘Are you hot/cold in that costume?’

The Orangery, Kensington Palace

Debutantes tea at the Orangery

We couldn’t leave Kensingon Palace without having tea in the nearby Orangery, built in the 18th Century and now serving breakfast, lunch and tea in elegant surroundings. It’s very popular in summer and you may have to queue but we had both lunch and tea there and enjoyed it immensely. The staff were very pleasant and welcoming although my Debutante’s afternoon tea was a bit disappointing for £15 as it consisted of some tiny sandwiches and snacks and I was left feeling I could have eaten it all again in a few mouthfuls. As my friend observed, perhaps those Debutantes had to watch what they ate to keep their figure. Everyone else around us was having the Signature Orange Tea which looked much nicer and better value at £14.55 with a large scone with cream and jam, two cakes and some sandwiches presented on a small cake stand, which is what I’d recommend you to try.

I’ll definitely be back to take my daughter around Kensington Palace, especially was we both love fashion, so I’m hoping the Royal Ceremonial Dress Collection will be open when we visit.

Other London articles to enjoy

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Paintings and Poetry at the Khalil Gibran museum in Lebanon

In some ways this story is more about words than pictures, or is it more pictures than words? for it’s about the American-Lebanese poet and painter, Khalil Gibran whose museum and last resting place at Bcharre I visited on my visit to Lebanon.

You may not have heard of Khalil Gibran, but you have probably heard his poetry even though you don’t realise it. It’s that brand of spiritual wisdom that twangs the emotional chords and touches the heart, although the sceptic in you may find it a little cheesy and say ‘is life really so simple?’ Gibran’s most famous work is The Prophet, the story of a wise man about to leave his home country, who before he leaves is asked by his followers to give them the benefit of his wisdom on subjects of life, love, death and everything in between. These qotations from The Prophet will give you the flavour.

On marriage;

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

I visited the museum with a friend on our mini road trip around Lebanon, having driven north from Beirut, inland through the Quadisha valley and up towards the high pass over the Mt Lebanon. We stopped at Bcharre, high up on the side of a valley with fantastic views. With roses blooming on the terrace of the museum, it was easy to see why Khalil Gibran chose to return to Lebanon after emigrating as a child to America and requested this former monastery as his final resting place.

Khalil Gibran on children from the Prophet;

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

The museum brings home that Gibran was as much a painter as a writer and poet and he studied art in Paris in 1908 under Auguste Rodin. At the museum you’ll find a large collection of Gibran’s paintings and drawings housed in a series of small gallery rooms that lead from one to another on different levels until you reach the former monastery chapel where Gibran’s casket was placed along with some of his favourite posessions. There’s also a small shop on the way out to buy postcards and books about Khalil Gibran’s work.

khalil Gibran on joy and sorrow from The Prophet;

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain

Khalil Gibran museum at Bchare in Lebanon

The Khalil Gibran museum in Lebanon

After our visit to the Museum, my friend and I had lunch at a cafe beneath a waterfall overlooking the valley then continued on our way over the snowline on Mt Lebanon and down into the Bekaa valley beyond. If you enjoy the poetry of the Prophet and want to read more of the wisdom you can find it here.

Do tell me whether you find Khalil Gibran’s poetry cheesy or heart warming?

This article is posted as part of Photo Friday over at Delicious Baby - head over to see all the other Friday photos.

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