Entered on 15 August 2003 at 8:25 a.m..
Buckingham Palace
Sorry for not updating yesterday, but I was off with the Cranfield contingent to see the staterooms at Buckingham Palace. They are only open during July and August, so off I went. I think I've seen almost every royal residence now, and while Buckingham Palace was by far the biggest and the most opulent indoors, out of doors it was rather disappointing. I can see now why the queen prefers Sandringham. But it was a good excuse to get down to London. The weather was perfect, highs in the mid 70s, sunny with a slight breeze. We didn't get to the palace until 11am and our tickets were for 12, so I wandered over to the Girl Guide headquarters and had a look around at the patches and things. I decided to buy myself a T-Shirt and a patch. Then I joined the thousands of people waiting to see the changing of the guard. It is always fun crusing up agains iron gates and railings with police officers on horseback yelling at the crowd to get back (when only about 1/3 of the crowd can understand them).
I headed into the palace a little after 12 having survived the security checks. It took me a little over an hour to wander through the palace, which was mostly built and decorated in the past 3 centuries (thus the big rooms). All starting with George IV (His father was the one who lost the colonies) As with all royal palaces there was lots of art in the form of furniture, paintings, statues, porcelain, etc. My favorite piece was a statue in the main staircase. It was done in white marble and depicted a woman with an angel asleep on her lap. The striking thing about it was that the woman was pulling at/stroking one of the angel's wings which was sticking up. I found that really sweet, because it seemed so real. Just like mothers stroke their children's hair when they are sleeping, if you had an angel asleep on your lap, you might very well find yourself stroking his wings.
After that I got some lunch at a local deli and went down to green park to eat it. As I sat on the bench I had 3 groups of people join me, each from a different country. First there was the German family with tired feet, who were intent on documenting the movement of a squirrel, then there was the 2 Spanish couples who took turns taking pictures of themselves on the bench, and finally two Russian (young) women who were just there to look pretty and smoke. It wasn't the smoke that got to me as I sat there eating, but the sunshine that I had sat myself in had moved on.
So I decided to go relocate to the sunshine and read a book my mother had just sent me. I only had about 2 hours left and I just didn't feel like running all over London on such a beautiful day, so I just sat and read. That was until Harlen (random guy in the park) sent a frisbee flying at me. We ended up playing for about 10 minutes until I had to leave to go catch the coach back to Cranfield. I am happy to report that I can still through a frisbee relatively well.
Unfortunately, some of my fellow passengers were late returning so we got caught in traffic on the way home. I don't know if it was the stop and go nature, the fact that I had been outside all day, or sitting on the sunny side of the bus, but I had a splitting head ache when I got home, and after eating some dinner I went to bed.
I feel much better today, and must get on with my writing.