London - Day 2

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The weather today was about the same as yesterday- mostly cloudy and breezy but fairly warm – a day where a jacket is at times too warm, and at other times you need it. We had breakfast again at the motel and headed for Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard. We got there and Linda staked out a place on the Queen Victoria memorial directly in front of the Palace. I went wandering around checking everything else out. The Guard mobilizes at different parts of the city and marches to the palace. They start at 11:00 but don’t start arriving at the palace until 11:45. We got there a little before 10:00 and there were already a lot of people there. It takes place every other day this time of the year. As near as I can understand its like different regiments guard the palace for 2 days each. When we got there it was soldiers with green uniforms on. They would stand at the little guard shacks on the front of the palace and every so often they would march across in front and then back to their post. In changing the guard, there are probably 30 to 40 soldiers that change, and I imagine they stay at the palace and trade off among themselves. Eventually we saw the redcoats with the bearskin hats coming and they all had band instruments and were playing. Several other groups came marching in, too. Once they all got there, there was a lot of loud hollering of the generals barking orders and such and several band songs by different groups. It was impossible to figure out what all of it meant, but eventually the green coated guards came marching out playing their instruments and headed down the street. Then it was the red coated guards left at the guard shacks. The queen was in the palace but we didn’t even get to see her. They said she was leaving this afternoon to go on vacation. Next we followed the route that Will and Kate took in their wedding carriage -in reverse- to Westminster Abbey. We then bought tickets – 16 british pounds each – and toured the abbey. Here again, they give you tour guides that you can punch in a number at an attraction and listen to a description of that area. Our impression of the abbey is a little different than it was before. First of all it was much smaller than it looked in the pictures of the royal wedding. However with the ceiling waaay up there it was still impressive. There are over 3000 people buried in the church, so it was more like going through a cemetery than a church! A lot of people are buried under the floor, but there are also a lot that are in tombs above ground, and a lot of those have likenesses of the people that are in them on the top. The church still has services in it everyday. There was evensong at 5:00 in the evening, but we were gone before that. Also, every hour during the day they ask everyone to pause while they have a prayer over the PA system. It was a lady that prayed, but she had a nice, simple, short prayer. There was a lot of writing engraved in stone about each person that was buried there. Linda read one that said that he died at a certain date and that his wife was with child and it stated the date when the child was born and Linda figured it out it was born 9 months and 2 days after the father died. That church dates back to the 900’s and there are some tombs that are almost that old. I found it interesting that Charles Darwin, the one that invented evolution, was buried in there - we even walked on his grave. It’s kind of weird, but they even have a food shop in the courtyard of the church and a big souvenir shop attached to the outside. But it was interesting to figure out where Kate walked when she came down the aisle. They did not allow cell phones or pictures anywhere on the grounds. Linda was standing outside talking to Kaitlyn and one of the vergers came and told her to get off her phone. They had a coronation chair there, but they were working on restoring it. We could see it through glass and there were two people working on it with magnifying glasses and tweezers. Everybody that has ever been crowned in that church used that same chair. It looked like they had had some naughty boys in church, too, because there were names carved in the back of the chair. We left the abbey and walked to the base of Big Ben and waited for 4:00 to hear it chime. It chimed through Westminster and we thought it was done – were a little disappointed, when all of a sudden there was a loud BONG! And then 3 more times. Big Ben is not the clock nor the tower, but is the bell that tolls the hour. The bell weighs 13 tons! You could hear it ring for a while after it had quit. We were kind of planning on going to the Tower of London (another old palace) but we had seen so much of that already, we just took a leisurely stroll along the river. We probably walked 2 miles down the river and then crossed on the millennium bridge which is a strange looking pedestrian bridge probably about 20’ wide. Shortly after it was built with a poor design it went to flopping around. I’m not sure if it fell or if anyone got hurt or not, but they corrected the problems and it was good and solid now. We wanted Fish and Chips for supper, so we started looking for a place. We found a pub called The Anchor and went in there. By the way pub in London is short for public place so a lot of eateries go by that distinction. We sat down at a table and each table had a number on it and a menu. We had to go to the counter and order and tell them our table number, and then you pay right away, too. So we both had fish and chips – Linda had peas with it and I had mashed peas – it was really good! We then walked down a bit and walked across the river on the London Bridge. There are great views of the tower bridge from there, which is a much more majestic bridge. We then took the subway back to the motel, got the computer and walked across the street to Starbucks to update the blog – and then to bed.

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