Beanie Mouse: Birthday adventure day two

Monday, 21 October 2019

Birthday adventure day two

Today when we got up, we got breakfast in bed!!!!

It came in a box - cornflakes in a pot and a muffin.....

.....and milk for the cornflakes and orange juice!! And we already had facilities to make tea!

AND it's my birthday!!!!

We checked the view and it looked a bit wet and damp....

But we don't let that bother us!! We're going out for another adventure!!

We spotted some grafitti on the way to the bus stop

It's quite fun, huh!

First off, we went to the bus stop we went to yesterday..... but it's the wrong one!!!

We had to come back to the bus station!!!

We're getting a number 33 bus today!!!

When we got on the bus, we went over the Thames!!!

Oh this is fun! We've never ridden this bus before!

Where are we going today?

We got off here! Strawberry Hill House!!!

AND they've got a cafe! Excellent, we can eat!

We were a little early and they weren't quite open yet.....

But we had a bit of a nose around anyway!

They got some pretty flowers........

And we left a bookcrossing book in here too!

The ticket office is that way! LET'S GO!!

This is quite a fancy castle isn't it?!!

Very fancy!!

It's got of little nooks and crannies in it!

And statues!!

Horace Walpole? He wrote The Castle of Otranto which was the first gothic book ever written!! He lived in this house!

Cool huh?!?!

We made a video of the gardens!

And then it was time to go in! They have stained glass windows all over the house, but they're all different pieces that they bought up from difference places! All the windows are patchwork glass!!

They're very pretty!

The inside is completely mad! That's the main staircase there...

And that's a painted ceiling!

Here's the library!

They're made from carved wood because Mr Walpole was really stingy and penny-pinching and stone carving was really expensive!

All of the woodwork was based on stone carving seen in cathedrals and mauseleums from Rouen cathedral and St Pauls' Cathedral!

Here's the library!

Here's one of the ceilings!! That's Papier mache!!!!!!!!!!! It is! Really!!

That's one of the fancy fireplaces with a fancy mirror..... the side bits are wooden, not stone!

Another ceiling! Again, that's papier mache! This place is bonkers!!!

Oh I'm so glad we came here!!

That's a pewter and bronze metal inlay into a wooden floor of a saracen. There's lots of pictures of saracen all over the house, all with the same hat!

There's more of the stained glass. Horace didn't have a "proper" job, because his parents were really wealthy, and so was his wife. So he spent all the money doing up this house!

Isn't that fab?!

There's so much stuff here to see!

....more stained glass! Some of it dates back to the 1600s!

Another fancy fireplace!

That's tiles down the side of a fireplace!

That's the staircase coming down to the ground floor The ground floor is darker that the upper floors because Horace Walpole wanted it to have "gloomth". That's a cross between Gloomy and Warmth! That's today's word - gloomth!!!

This is a little servants pantry which hasn't been completely done up yet, but still has some of the original wallpaper (through the left hand door, where the red towel is)

Then we went to the cafe and had lunch! We had a cappacino and a cheesey tuna panini which was YUMTASTIC!!! I want to come back here just for one of those!