Off to Chelsea

Since we landed in The Netherlands last year, Rochelle has been waiting for her chance to go to one of the huge garden shows in the UK. So we hopped over to London to go to the biggest of the big, the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Garden Show. Rochelle's even a member of the RHS even though we don't live in the UK. The weather was anything but spectacular this trip, but luckily the clouds parted on Friday, the day we went to the show.

We decided that we wanted a different view of London, so we took the advice of friends and stayed outside of the city in Richmond-Upon-Thames. Only about 30 minutes by tube, Richmond is a very casual river town, with a very nice pub & restaurant scene. We flew in Thursday morning and spent the rest of the day pretty much just strolling around town. It was off-and-on cloudy but at least not raining. For more about Richmond visit the photoblog.

We loved the name of this wine store in Richmond.

How british can you get ... watching an evening of cricket from a Richmond pub.

In order to try to beat the crowds, we headed out early for Chelsea and made it there right at opening time. Even then it was pretty populated; I found that I didn't take very many garden pictures, because you couldn't get a shot without a ton of people in it. The shots below don't do the gardens justice ... click the links for full descriptions. Rochelle's favorite garden was the Linnaeus garden -- she does tend to like whites & blues (click the link to see why there was a tribute to Linnaeus). My favorite was the Fetzer garden, not because they are a former client of mine, but because I liked the way they recreated a California style garden, especially the real vines and the cool bat house. We both liked the Cancer Research garden with its wood sculpture.

Pictured (click to enlarge): Linnaeus, Fetzer, and Cancer Research gardens

By 10-10:30 or so the legendary crowd was in full force. We finished looking at the displays in the pavilion, then took a walk through some more of the outside commercial exhibits. We tried our first Pimm's cocktail and decided it must be an acquired taste. So we headed for an early lunch at the Laurent-Perrier/Loch Fyne champagne/seafood restaurant. We tried unsuccessfully to find a boat launch from the area, and ended up heading back to Richmond for the evening.

Pictured: midday crowds at Chelsea

Saturday & Sunday were miserably rainy, so we decided to skip our planned visit to the Kew Garden and head into the city. On Saturday we shopped on Oxford Street (it seemed almost as crowded as the flower show) and took a boat ride on the Thames during a break in the rain. We visited the British Museum, which is very rich in history/archaeology. Sunday we headed in to the Tate Modern. Before we know it we were back on the train to Gatwick and taking off for home. Hopefully we'll make it to one of the other big shows while we're living in Europe.

Pictured: (L) From our boat tour, a view of the HMS Belfast and Tower Bridge.

(R) The Millennium Bridge (click the link to read about its interesting history), looking from the Tate Modern to St. Paul's (evidently this area is in the midst of a building boom!)