Cheerio from merry olde England! (All right, that’s enough of that…)
Landed this morning after a delightful flight over in Business Class – I slept (kinda) comfortably on a trans-Atlantic flight for the first time ever. Bless you, British Airways, and your full-reclining little pod-thingies. In preparation for the week, I watched “My Week with Marilyn” on the way over. Kenneth Brannagh is the male Meryl Streep when it comes to accents – he totally nailed Laurence Olivier both as a man and as his character in “The Prince and the Showgirl.” Which I know you’ve all totally seen, so you can appreciate the brilliance of this performance. (Right. Probably the only person reading this who has seen it is my mom. So – hi, Mom!)
Right! Off to London!
Warning: I am a totally crap photographer, so the images below are the best I could do with my limited skills, tiny camera, jet lag and rainy weather. I’m lucky to even find the shutter button. Seriously.
Took the Tube into central London with all kinds of Diamond Jubilee revelers – there was a grandfather sitting next to me with his granddaughter, and she had the cutest little Union Jack dress and matching bows in her hair. All over the city, people have the Union Jack on their umbrellas, their hats, their shirts, their faces, waving from their backbacks, on their sunglasses, popping from springs on headbands – everywhere. It’s awesome to see.
I checked into my hotel (it’s technically a hostel, I guess – but I can’t call it that thanks to the movies) and found the Union Jack proudly waving there too.
Then it was off to Kensington Palace to check out where the first monarch to celebrate a Diamond Jubilee – Queen Victoria – was born and raised.
Kensington Palace was also the home of William and Mary, who rocked some pretty impressive ceiling murals in their day, and of Princess Diana. Apparently, Wills and Kate will be making Kensington Palace their home in the future too. It doesn’t feel very “palace-y”, more like a really nice manor house somewhere. It’s recently undergone a 12-million-pound renovation, and is really beautiful. They’ve incorporated all kinds of snippets from Victoria’s letters and diaries into the exhibits on her life, even carving them into mirrors and having them woven into carpets. It really gives you the sense that people *lived* in these rooms, and that it’s not just a museum somewhere.
And the princess who lived here was *tiny* – her wedding dress shows that she would have only come up to about my armpit. Just in case I wasn’t already feeling like a lumbering beast thanks to being in my traveling clothes for far too long, this finished me off. :\
Kensington Palace does have some gorgeous gardens, and is bordered by Kensington Park. The British sure do love their flowers – after all, what else would you do with all this rain? There are even flowers in the Underground station entrance, which made me smile.
Since it is the Diamond Jubilee weekend, and I had just seen all the paraphernalia surrounding Queen Victoria’s Jubilee, I took the Underground (or “Tube”, as the locals call it!) to Tower Hill to see the end of the Jubilee Flotilla down the Thames. And it was absolutely insane. Thousands of people were crowded around the Tower of London, and all I could see once I worked my way down to the edge of the crowd was the entrance to the pier. I tried to move over towards the Tower itself, and got a glimpse of the Queen’s Guards.
As I was taking this photo, it started to rain – hard. Even the Guards gave up and went inside – I suspect to protect their hats. I ducked through the crowds, taking advantage of other people’s Union-Jack-printed umbrellas, until I heard a shout go up. I jumped up on my toes, and looked at the barge coming down the river. Is that the Queen’s Barge? The guy behind me says it is, people are yelling and waving flags, it’s raining on my camera, somebody says she’s wearing white, can I hold my camera up high enough to get a photo – YEAH!
OK, so you can barely see the red and gold barge that carried the Royal Family, and I’m sure my mom had a better view watching at home – but I was THERE. Getting rained on with thousands of Britons, and wishing I had a Union Jack to wave myself. (There goes any hope *I* have of getting into the D.A.R. 🙂 ) Or at least an awesome hat like this little guy. Is there anything MORE British than a Union Jack bowler?
After the Queen’s Barge had passed, I made my way back to the Tube station. HUGE crowds greeted me at the entrance to the station, but I have to hand it to the police and transport staff. They kept people moving through at a fairly good rate, and when I did get down to the train it was hardly crowded at all. It got much more full as we went through town, but nothing nuts. I saw many, many more policemen and women in the Tube stations this weekend than I ever have before, but not in a menacing way – just a “we’re prepared for anything” kind of way. I sat next to two flight attendants from American Airlines on the train who were just in London for a day-long layover, and we compared notes on our Flotilla sightings (or lack thereof) and I got book/wine bar/pizza recommendations from them before my Tube stop.
Then it was back to my hotel with my take-away sandwich and yogurt parfait (I could write an entire post on Pret-A-Manger and my love for it) and to write this for you all. I hope you enjoyed my first day in London as much as I did. Tomorrow, it’s back to the Tower and more Jubilee-related fun Monday night!
Love it! Sounds like you’re having a blast. Favorite sentence: “I’ll bet those hats stink if you get them wet.”