Buckingham to Big Ben

Thursday it was back to Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard. We went into it knowing we probably wouldn't see much, since you have to get there incredibly early to score a place at the front of the palace. I didn't think the kids would stand much more than an hour wait, so we showed up at 10 to see what we could see.

We couldn't get near the front gates, but we did get a spot right at the railings along the parade route behind the Victoria Memorial. I asked one of the crowd control guys if he thought I should try to get closer. He took a look at my three kiddos and told me I should stay right where I was, so I did.

Here's Evie snarfing a chocolate McVitie's biscuit (we don't get the chocolate ones in India ... why?), and Johnny playing with my iPod while we wait. There's an app for the changing of the guard! Johnny learned all about the ceremony and the different regiments involved while we waited.

Since we weren't right at the front of the palace, we couldn't see the ceremony. We did get awesome views of the guards, though, like this band marching back to St. James Palace before the ceremony.

In this photo you can see how far we were from the real action. Oh, well. If I'm ever in London without the kids, or with the kids when they're older, we'll try to muscle our way up to the front.

These are Household Cavalry on their way to the Horse Guards parade grounds.

So what did we do during the hour-long wait? Evie dropped a biscuit, and we watched the pigeons fight over it for a while. The groundskeepers were working on the summer gardens, and every time they rode by in a maintenance car, they'd give us all the royal wave, which was pretty amusing. We also played "I Spy" and took pictures of some of the objects we spotted. The flagpoles and statues:

The golden top to the Victoria Memorial:

Samuel was amazingly good during the whole thing. It helped that there were a lot of "horsies" around. He was fascinated by them, as was the woman standing right next to me. She gave a running commentary in a fantastic British accent: "Oh, look! A chestnut and two grays. Lovely. Lucky horses to land in such a stable, well looked after, they are. ..."

The time actually passed amazingly quickly, what with all the people and horse watching. Before we knew it, we heard the band playing and saw the Old Guard marching to Buckingham Palace from St. James Palace. Some of the guards in the ceremony are coming from St. James, and others are marching from the barracks, which we could only see in the distance and over people's heads. Each regiment is preceded by a military band.

the guard

Then we waited around a little more, hearing music from the palace. Pretty soon, these two guards were marched back to St. James.

One of the cavalry regiments rode out another gate.

Some more guards marched from St. James to Buckingham Palace.

Lots of music and marching in the distance (alas)

And then the New Guard marched back to St. James with band accompaniment.

So we missed much of the pomp and ceremony but got a close-up view of the participants. Pretty cool, eh?

After all the marching, we walked over to St. James Park and found this enormous floral crown that was installed for the Diamond Jubilee.

We have about 20 pictures of this crown, because Johnny and Evie each insisted that they have a turn taking pictures. "She got to take three." "No! I only took two, so now I get to take another." "But now you took four so I get to take another, too." Among all the crown photos, I found this close-up of one of the several thousand ducks wandering around the park. I'm not sure who is responsible, but it's not a bad photo.

Here are the kids with the London Eye in the background. As you can see, Samuel was entering a cranky phase.

More of the park

Here are the kids enjoying hot dogs and panini in the park. I'm in love with hot panini sandwiches! This one was sun-dried tomato, fresh mozzarella, and pesto. My mouth waters to think about it. I will try not to think about it when we're back in India.

After lunch, the kids had some serious playtime, which included spinning in circles,

sprinting to Mom from random starting points

using sticks to dig into the dirt (This may have been Not Allowed, but no one stopped us so I let them carry on. One passerby did call out in a heavy Irish accent "Ayre ya doin some gahrrrrdenin, then?" trill the rrrrrrs to get the full effect)

and exploring a haunted forest. Did you hear about the ghost of St. James? He lives in these trees, you know.

After about 45 minutes of this, I wrangled Samuel back into the stroller and we headed off toward Trafalgar Square, passing Sir James Cook along the way.

This is Admiralty Arch from the Trafalgar Square side. It's the entrance to the Mall, which leads back to Buckingham Palace.

After passing by Admiralty Arch, we arrived at Trafalgar Square. There it all was: Nelson's Column, the lions, the National Gallery, St. Martin-in-the-Fields church, double-decker red buses, flocks of tourists. It felt so ... London-y!

Here are the kids in front of one of the bronze lions around Nelson's Column. Did you know that the lions were cast with cannons that were seized from the French and Spanish? Johnny thought that was pretty cool. Down with Napoleon! Oh, yeah!

Samuel is losing it again ...

In the background of this photo you can see the Fourth Plinth. Three of Trafalgar Square's corners have statues of famous military leaders, but the fourth corner is a rotating contemporary art installation. The current piece is a sculpture of a boy on a rocking horse. The statue across the square is of a war hero on horseback, so by mirroring that statue with the boy on the toy horse the artist is trying to evoke the idea of a heroic but unknown future. I liked the piece.

They've also got this countdown to the Olympics clock. Johnny has told John and me that he thinks it's mighty lame that we're in London in 2012 but will NOT be here for the Games. You can't have everything, kid.

Here's a view of Big Ben from the south end of the square.

We followed Whitehall Street down toward the Houses of Parliament, passing all kinds of fun on the way. The mounted guard at the entrance to the Horse Guards Parade was a favorite of Samuel's. When I told him to say bye-bye to the horse, he screamed, "No! I'm NOT going to say bye-bye to the horsie!" The crowd found this very amusing.

The protesters outside 10 Downing Street made me think of the protesters who hold vigil outside the White House. These protesters want Britain to stop deporting Congolese rebels back to the DRC and Kabila.

We finally made it to the Houses of Parliament, where Johnny went into raptures over Big Ben. He declared Big Ben the coolest of all the cool things we'd seen that day. Interesting. It wasn't cool enough to distract him from his quest to give Evie bunny ears in every picture I take, though.

I must say, I was pretty taken with Big Ben myself. It's just so ... big ... much bigger than I had imagined it would be.

What could possibly top Big Ben? Nothing, of course, so we called it a day and headed home on the Tube. We're getting to be Tube experts, you know.