The Royal Palace

A couple of weekends ago we put on our tourist hats and went on a trip to the Royal Palace.

It's been about 3 years since the monarchy of Nepal was abolished, and so what was the home of the royal family up until about 2008 (I think) is now open to the public to look around.

It was super-interesting.
There were loads of rooms you could go into and look at, including the bedrooms for visiting heads of states, where the British Queen will have stayed when she visited Nepal and the bedroom of the King of Nepal himself.
Interestingly, the room for the visitors was much grander.
The king's bedroom just looked like a fairly normal 50s bedroom!!

One of my favourite things was all the paintings of the previous kings. They were huuuge and the kings were always dressed in their proper king-gear with feathers coming out their hats.

Other interesting things we saw in the palace:
Two stuffed tigers in ready-to-pounce-positions. We took turns standing under them and imagining what it would be like to be mauled by a tiger. Conclusion: scary.
Gifts from various other countries - so basically lots of pretty ornaments and things from looooads of other countries.
A very grand staircase.
Paintings from Scotland of Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine. (Christine reckoned these may have been painted by Princes Charles - did you even know he paints?!)

And then there was the garden.
In 2001 there was a massacre of the royal family, where one of the crown princes shot the rest of his family.
The building this took place in has been taken down, but we could see where it was that it happened.
And there were even still some bullet holes in another wall from the incident.
I can't really think of a suitable word to describe this/what it was like to see this...

The history of Nepal is pretty fascinating.