Kenwood

Many historical homes, grounds, or archeological sites in England are owned by either the National Trust or English Heritage. Each of the organizations has a yearly pass that allows admittance to all their sites, which is a good deal when you're planning on doing a lot of travel and seeing as much as possible. Of course, just about every site has a gift shop and the first one we entered Anya spotted this Monopoly: English Heritage game. I groaned inside and steered her away from it, because Monopoly is not my favorite game in the world. She did not forget it though, and ended up buying it with her own money a few trips later. I'm actually so glad she did. I still don't like Monopoly, but what I do like is that each of the properties is an English Heritage site. It's gotten her excited about outings so much more than talk of beautiful grounds or historically significant houses ever could.  

This is all just to say that Anya was actually the instigator of this little outing to Kenwood House. It's a beautiful country home on beautiful grounds just outside London. It would be a great outing for someone traveling to only London who wanted to get an idea of the English country estate experience.  

This was one of our favorite country estate outings. I'm not sure if it's because the grounds and estate are qualitatively better than others, or if it's because my girls were happy to be along, it was a beautiful spring day and the weather was perfect. 

From the house there's a slope of grass that leads down to a little lake. From there, there's all kinds of walking trails to explore.

We encountered a cute little bird family and this unusual bird. Some kind of a fancy duck?

There's lots of great places for lounging on the grass on a sunny day.

Flowers were blooming all over the grounds, especially the rhododendrons and azaleas - reminding me of my home town Seattle. Kenwood House was a great way to spend a sunny Bank Holiday in April.