Grand Palace Day 3 Part 2

Well, I warned you. Tons of pictures. Everything at the Grand Palace was so glittery and shiny that I couldn't help taking pictures of everything. Sometimes several pictures of the same thing. Just to be sure I captured the the sparkle. Seriously though, the detail on the buildings was AMAZING!!!! Such tiny pieces of glass and ceramic tiled absolutely everywhere. Except the places where it was gold. After we deftly avoided the wily strangers we entered the palace grounds. We had to avoid the "licensed" tour guides inside as we made our way to the tickets. They are wily too! The tickets were a little pricy but on the upside we didn't have to pay for the park we visited on a different day as that was included. What park you ask? All in good time.. Anyways, they had the headphones available to rent as well but we just opted for the wander around and make up stuff option. Actually it was more like wander around and stop constantly for photo ops! If you go at the correct time, which we make a point never to do, you can get free tours inside in your language. It would have been nice to have someone explaining things but we enjoyed it anyways. (By we I mean I, since Matt was feeling not quite the thing.) I really should have been a good wife and take a couple snaps outside the palace and then insist we go find a place for him to lie down in AC.  Unfortunately my desire to see the place that I have wanted to go for a long time overrode that line of thinking. I actually did offer, but Matt was too gentlemanly. So, into the palace grounds we went.

Here is a view of one area inside the palace:
Inside the perimeter of part of the grounds there are murals. Apparently there are 2 kilometers of them. I believe it and we weren't able to see all of them. Most of the murals were filled with scenes of a religious nature but it was interesting to see in amongst all of that, people in everyday life. I thought this scene was lovely and simple.
There were many planters and flower gardens:

One of my favorite things about the glitter was seeing how intricate the tile work was.  I loved the ones that were ceramic plates that had been broken up into tile flower mosaics. This building is decorated that way:


Also on the grounds is a model of the Angkor Wat which is in Cambodia. I have actually always wanted to see the actual one, (ever since I knew it existed) but this was close enough for now.

A large portion of the grounds is closed to public viewing. But I peeked through the gate and took this picture of one of the private palaces. They still use it for hosting VIPs.
Walking towards the main palace. (You can't go inside right now.) This gate is decorated with those ceramic flowers I like.
This is a spot where the king could've sat to relax outside:
Did you notice the chandeliers?

 This is outside one of the throne halls. They are doing construction, hence the slide. If you look closely though, it's positioned so as to make it look like one of the sculptures is poised to take the ride of his life.
We had a slide like that on our house when we were redoing our roof too. Our slide was a little less fancy but just as dangerous.  Our roof was a teensy less fancy too. Just a tad.

Here is the entrance to the main palace, which we weren't able to enter this time. Notice the guard. Oh wait, Matt is there too! And a Royal Elephant! What a photo opportunity! See how perky Matt looks? That's because you can go into a couple rooms on the street level in this palace and they contain swords and guns museums. Cheered him right up. He saw lots of guns he never saw before, some he didn't know existed. Like the quadruple barreled shotgun. You can't make these things up folks! Unfortunately, no pictures for you gun enthusiasts. Sorry.

The Main Palace:
So pretty.  Also in the grounds was a Silk and Textile Museum. Which if you are in the area is TOTALLY worth a look. You can just go there if you don't want to look at the whole palace but you will have to pay to go in, and it is included in the fee for the whole palace and park thing. Just so you know.

Anyways, we learned so much about silk in Thailand and the best part is, at the end I GOT TO PLAY DRESS UP!!!!!!!!! SERIOUSLY SO COOL! Except the part where I almost made a fatal color combination and the helper ladies laughed at me. Apparently green with blue does NOT go. ( I had no idea.) So we went with pink.  Per their suggestion. That was better anyways because it matched my sunburn. Which you can't really see in the pictures.
After we took this picture, a tourist gave me HER fan and then took pictures of me holding it.  Now I know how it feels to be a tourist attraction.  I really wanted to buy some silky something or other, because after you have seen the really good silk then the stuff in the regular markets looks cheesy. However, the gift shop wasn't bargain priced. So the cheesy stuff started to look pretty awesome.

After I got back into regular clothes (so sad) we hustled back to the river. On the way we passed through the market. You can buy EVERYTHING at the markets.It took us awhile to figure out the boat thing, as we were NOT going to get tricked into the tourist thing again. So we finally figured out the ferry ride across and then the boat back. We missed one boat because we were trying to encourage a tourist. Poor guy was trying to see as much as possible but everything was closed. We gave a couple suggestions and then got on the next boat. Here is a picture of the engine of a long tailed boat like I promised in the last post. Matt wanted to make sure we had a picture.  Apparently it is extremely cool.  I don't really know, but it looks big and shiny.
The palace from the river:
Full view of long tailed boat.
Well, that's all for that day. We were late to meet our buddies for dinner, since we missed our boat and misjudged time it would take to get back since the regular boat stops at more piers. Still, we made it and after dinner we all chatted by the pool at our hotel.

More later, we miss you all. Please drop us a line if you have a chance, we would love to hear how things are at home. Even the small details make us smile and feel like we are there with you! Love, M&L