Hill Palace

There are a number of palaces in India, and Kerala is home to a number of them. Near Kochi, one such palace is the Hill Palace which was built in 1865. The Kochi Royal Family took residence here until royalty went out of style during the modern age.

There are 49 buildings on 52 acres, and the largest archaeological museum in Kerala is on the grounds.

Savi, Franklin and Vijay were kind enough to take me there. They had never been tothe Palace, and so it was a new experience for all of us.

I was allowed to take pictures outside the grounds, but there are no pictures or video allowed within the Palace. So, if you want to see what's inside the palace and museum, you need to be here to pay the entrance fee, which might be why the don't allow pics or video. The four of us debated this issues for a few minutes, and we came to the conclusion that the topic wasn't worth debating...it was more important to spend our time checking out the palace.

Here is the basic 101 entrance sign found at most semi-world wonder sites. If you get a thrill by reading semi-world wonder signs, then click the pic below for a better pic you can zoom into.

 

Here are the steps that lead up to the palace. The girls in the photo have on very nice colors, yellow, purple, blue and green. Click on the pic below to get a nicer pic. I'm sure these girls called each other, and talked for over an hour to make sure they were not wearing the same colors, and who would look better in blue or green.

 

This pic is the entrance to the temple. You can see Vijay, Savi and Franklin in this photo, but I'm not going to provide a high resolution pic of them, because they are so photogenic other girls might want to date them, and I don't want my blog turned into a dating site. On the other hand, I do accept dating e-mail  from very rich widows, but if you have seen my picture on this blog, I doubt a rich widow wants to marry a monkey...even if it's a cute monkey.

 

Here are a few more shots I was able to get outside...remember, I was not allowed to take pics inside. There was security everywhere, and I thought the strip search was a bit too much, but apparently that was only for tourists because Franklin, Savi and Vijay said they had not been "probed".

 

At this point, we went though the palace, and it was great. The museum was nice. We found a vault where a lot of gold jewelery and the king's crown were held. There was also an old Temple on the grounds which had traditional paintings. I was told by someone the architecture was from the Mogul Empire. The comment from the guys were, "There is a lot here. I didn't expect it to be so big. Wow, this really was worth 20 rupees". ..(20 rupees is about 40 cents USD.

Here is another pic:

Yes, this is a T-Rex in the picture, and how it got there, I have no idea. Perhaps the palace guards tracked it down, killed it,  stuffed it, and then used it to scare of potential enemies. Or perhaps, no good museum is complete without a T-Rex for the kids.

Overall, there was a lot to see, and a lot of history and architecture.

All the Hill Palace pics are here

 

If you want to know more, go to these links:

http://www.webindia123.com/monuments/museums/hillpalace.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrippunithura

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochin_Royal_Family

 

Note: One thing to notice about the WebIndia link is that they don't have pics on the inside either. Also, I  think my "palace steps" picture is much better...if you think so too, make a comment, and we can get a petition and perhaps have a million man march to change their ugly pic to my nicer pic.

Note 2: A petition which leads to a million man march comprises of 3 people and a used sticky note. The key is marketing as in all things sold.