Right on Kew

...Gardens, that is!! OK, so as if being a Cloak wasn't enough to make me a really poor punster, apparently being in Britain has. Yesss.

We went up to Kew Gardens

(aside) in November...

and it was an absolutely GORgeous day. We really enjoyed ourselves. We brought a picnic lunch and ate on benches overlooking a lake and some very bizarre duck-geese.

Kew Gardens is a botanic garden, but has royalty written all over it. Henry VII built Richmond Palace there in the 16th century. I could go into great (and boy, oh boy, do I mean GREAT!) detail here, but essentially that's the farthest back the royalty link goes, I think. If you're interested in the history, or anything else about the place, their website is www.kew.org

Otherwise, it was lovely. They have pretty flowers: (This is in one of two or three tropical greenhouses)

...and they have a treetop walk, from which you can spot acres of beautiful trees--at the time we were there, the leaves were changing, which was really nice.

They also have dashing, bearded men who are willing to take their picture with you on the treetop walk.

The Treetop walk was very tall. There were a lot of stairs. We climbed them. It was strange, in a way, to climb stairs made out of wood, to get to the tree tops. Then, at the top of the stairs, we found this:

The trees behind those glass elevator doors are not a reflection. There is nothing there. The bad part about this is written on the sign to the left of the invisible elevator (which the Brits call a lift, by the way). Here's a close-up of that sign:

Kew Gardens: Making their contribution to the Mobility Impaired. For those of you who are finding this humorous in any way, don't be alarmed. We laughed quite hard. The worst part was, no one else in the immediate vicinity thought it was funny. They were staring at us weird Americans...apparently they could not see the irony.

Other than that, they have a Japanese pagoda...and peacocks!

And a tree or two:

We can hardly wait for Spring...