Our Anniversary...Oh, And The Royal Wedding

Well, what a weekend that was! As I mentioned in my last post, Dori and I were heading up to London for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary, and since William and Kate decided to choose our special day as their own wedding day it became a double celebration for us.

We left home on Thursday morning, travelling first by bus and then by train as we made our way into the capital. Once in London we headed towards our hotel where we dropped off our luggage and then went back out to see what we could of the last minute preparations for the Royals’ big day. We went first to Westminster Abbey where the crowds were already thronging outside. People had been camped out both there and on The Mall outside Buckingham Palace for a couple of days by then, in order to secure a good view of the events on Friday. The world’s media was out in force, as you would expect, and we saw a number of recognisable faces reporting back to the four corners of the globe.

We were kind of looking for a feasible spot to pick to stand at the next day, and it was immediately obvious that outside the Abbey was not going to be it! So we made our way over towards Buckingham Palace to see what was happening over there, and how many rows of tents there were already! It was busy there too, but a little less frenetic than at the Abbey and we decided that we would look to stand somewhere along The Mall on the following day. We hung around outside the palace for a while, enjoying the atmosphere and watching another large section of the world’s media doing their thing :) Everybody was in a good mood and the atmosphere was already building. After a couple of hours there we realized that we hadn’t eaten properly all day, and so headed off to get a bite to eat, before then going back to the hotel to get an early-ish night before getting up extremely early the next day!

The temporary media centre opposite Buckingham Palace

So, the big day arrived and we got up and washed before heading out a little before 6:00 a.m. We took the tube to Charing Cross and then walked down through Trafalgar Square and on towards The Mall. A lot of people were already there and we quickly chose a spot to stand about ¾ of the way along The Mall. There were some people who had camped out at the front and then a couple stood behind them, but we were right behind them with a good view of the processional route. It was cold, and we had a long wait ahead of us. Luckily, the people we were around were all very friendly and the atmosphere was one of excitement and anticipation. The crowds quickly grew, and before we knew it we were absolutely surrounded by people, and were unable to move much more than just shuffling on the spot. I think we managed to bag our position just in time!!

The procession to the Abbey started at 10:10 a.m. with William and Harry being driven past us, dressed very smartly in their military dress uniforms. We did try to get some pictures of them, and of the subsequent cars carrying the rest of the royal family, and the Middletons, but they were all going just a little bit too fast for us to be able to get any clear shots of them. That was especially so given that whenever a car went past the crowd would get very excited and everyone would be jostled about.

The ceremony itself was broadcast via loudspeakers to those of us waiting along the processional route, with many a cheer going up at various stages of the proceedings. Before too long they were all on their way back towards the palace, only this time in horse-drawn carriages. Here are a couple of snaps of William and Kate, and the Queen and Prince Phillip. Apologies for the quality, but as I said before we were all being buffeted and we were trying to catch a moving target!!

Once the procession had finished we very slowly made our way up The Mall towards the palace. My knees wouldn’t have allowed me to go fast having been stood on one spot for nearly 7 hours, but the huge numbers of people there made that impossible anyway. By taking a circuitous route via St James’s Park, we were able to get ahead of a lot of the crowd and back onto the now-open Mall and walk towards the palace ready for the traditional appearance on the balcony. The crush of people was amazing, but very good-natured. We were able to get reasonably close to the front of the crowd, though not as close as when we went to Trooping the Colour a couple of years back :) Here are another couple of snaps to give you an idea of what it was like.

And then, once the royals had disappeared to enjoy their celebrations, we VERY slowly made our way away from Buckingham Palace and towards our own anniversary celebratory meal in Covent Garden. It was a really great day and, no doubt, one that we will always remember. It was very colourful and the atmosphere was wonderful. Occasions like this come along about once every 25-30 years, so we felt very lucky to be able to join in this time around.

The following day we had some time to waste before heading home, and so we revisited the scene of all the festivities as things were being dismantled and taken away. Here are a couple more pictures that we took that day.

Which just leaves it for me to say that I hope that William and Kate have a very long and successful marriage, and to wish Dori a very happy anniversary!!!

PS Dori has also blogged about our adventures over the weekend, with some other interesting photos. Check her out over at The Yellow House!

Sunday Snaps #12 - A Royal Occasion

Happy Easter everyone! Yes, it's been over a year but Sunday Snaps is back by popular demand!!

The holidays are coming thick and fast right now here in England. It’s a four day weekend for a lot of people this week, with Good Friday and Easter Monday being public holidays and then next weekend will also be a four day break with the Monday being the May Day bank holiday. Friday is, of course, also a public holiday here because of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. So, for the sake of 3 days leave you can actually have an 11 day break from work! Lovely Jubbly!

As Dori mentioned on her blog a little while ago, the day of the Royal Wedding is also our 5th wedding anniversary and, by happy coincidence, we had arranged to be in London next weekend anyway. So we will spend a great deal of our special day on the streets of the capital enjoying the ambience of the royal occasion. Whether we will actually get to see much remains to be seen, but it is really the atmosphere of the day that we are looking forward to.

We have already seen pretty much all of the royals, including William and Kate – though they were on a break at the time! The first time that we saw William and Harry (and Kate) was at the Concert for Diana back in 2007 on what would have been Diana’s 46th birthday. Here are a couple of snaps we took that day, including one of Harry taken on a mobile phone through a pair of binoculars – hence the very poor quality!

We caught most of the rest of the family at Trooping the Colour in 2009, which I blogged about at the time. It was a little surreal to see them all lined up on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, just as I have seen dozens of times before on TV. Here are a couple of snaps from that day too.

If we do get to see anything of interest on Friday then we will no doubt share that with you here on our blogs. If we don’t then we will just enjoy our wedding anniversary together just as the nation goes wedding crazy!

It promises to be an interesting week.

Catching Up

It’s been a little while since my last posting. Apologies for my absence, but sometimes real-life takes precedence over the blogosphere :) So, what’s been happening in the interim?

Well, I guess the big news was the announcement of the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton and the subsequent fixing of the date for the Royal Wedding. It’s been a while since there has been an occasion of this size in this country, certainly not since the Queen’s Golden Jubilee and probably not since Charles and Diana’s wedding back in 1981. Back then there were street parties across the country and a real mood of national celebration. I suspect that it won’t be quite like that this time round. Questions have already been asked about how much the taxpayer should be paying out for the wedding at a time when drastic cuts are being made to public spending, taxes are on the rise and people are fearful for their jobs. But the reality is that hundreds of thousands of people are going to want to be in London to see some of the wedding and it will obviously be a huge security operation for the police that is going to cost millions of pounds. At a time of such austerity in can sometimes be a positive thing to have an event such as this to celebrate and get people’s minds away from the daily drudgery. Whatever the rights and wrongs, I can only wish the couple every happiness in their life together.

We have also been doing some celebrating of our own over the last week. Of course, last Thursday was Thanksgiving. This year we had a quiet, though very delicious, celebration here in the Yellow House. Last year, you may remember, we flew over to Georgia to enjoy the holiday with Dori’s family. Well, plane tickets sadly aren’t getting any cheaper and so we stayed on this side of the Atlantic this time round – although thanks to Skype we were able to experience a little of the festivities over in America :)

The celebratory mood continued yesterday as we attended the christening of my nephew’s baby girl. The weather here for the last week has gotten progressively colder and icier with many areas experiencing heavy snow, so the thought of spending an afternoon in a cold and draughty church – even for such a happy occasion – was a little daunting. However, as it turned out, the church was quite small, not at all draughty and even had some very welcome heating! The service was lovely and everyone thoroughly enjoyed it. Ironically, after the fears of getting too cold in the church, when we all decamped to the venue for the celebration meal afterwards, we found that the heating there was not turned on and it was frrrrrrreezing!!! Everybody was sat there, still in their coats and scarves for the entire time. It is always good though to have a story to relate to an event like that though – makes it even more memorable. :-)

The forecast looks like some of that snow I mentioned may be heading our way tonight. Hopefully it won’t be too heavy, although if it is we may be able to get some even better photos than we managed at the start of the year when the country was paralyzed for a couple of weeks! Here are a couple that we took at the time as we walked around on the first day of heavy snow.

Finally, can I wish the team bidding to bring the World Cup to England in 2018 every success over the next few days. FIFA will be announcing on Thursday the host countries of both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups and England have thrown their hat into the ring for the 2018 competition. Football politics may scupper their chances apparently, but you never know. Everyone assumed that the 2012 Olympics would be in Paris and look what happened there! Good luck to everyone involved!

Sunday Snaps 7 - Royal Kensington

This is another in my occasional Sunday Snaps series. Today I am staying closer to home and sharing some of the pictures we have taken during our many trips up to London.

The first is of Kensington Palace, which lies within the boundary of Kensington Gardens, which itself borders onto Hyde Park. The palace is a working palace to this day, currently the official residence of several minor royals. It is perhaps most famous today for being the former home of Diana, Princess of Wales following her separation from Prince Charles.



Lying just outside of Kensington Gardens is the Royal Albert Hall. It was built in 1871 and named, at the behest of Queen Victoria, after her beloved husband Prince Albert, who had died 10 years previously. It is a wonderful building and hosts many concerts, including the BBC Proms, as well as some sporting events. Dori and I are hoping to get the chance to attend a concert there sometime in the future.



Just across the road from the Albert Hall, back within Kensington Gardens, is the Albert Memorial. Completed a year after the Royal Albert Hall was opened, it is the official memorial for Prince Albert. The statue of Prince Albert at the centre of the memorial faces south towards the Royal Albert Hall, and is surrounded by a number of other sculptures that represent Agriculture, Commerce, Engineering, Manufactures, Asia, Africa, America and Europe. It is a wonderful memorial, and is certainly much more fitting than the abomination that is the Diana memorial which lies just a few hundred yards away!

Pomp and Pageantry Plus!

Well, what a day we had on Saturday. As I mentioned a while back, we were going up to London to see the Queen’s Birthday Parade, or Trooping the Colour. We raised ourselves at (almost) the crack of dawn in order to catch an early train into London. The one good thing about travelling at that time of day is that there is much less traffic on the roads! Anyway, the train journey into London went by quite quickly, and before we knew it we were at Paddington Station.

Thankfully the tube strike earlier this week did not last until the weekend, so we hopped onto a tube train to take us to Westminster. It is a great tube station to exit from, because as you do so immediately in front of you is the Houses of Parliament – it is a magnificent scene. Turning right as we came out of Westminster Underground Station, we headed towards St James’s Park. The site of the parade ground is at one end of the park, alongside Horse Guards Road. We timed our arrival perfectly as we had to wait in line for only a few minutes before the barriers were pushed aside and we all went through the security checks and then headed towards the stands.

Our seat was right at the back of one of the stands that back onto the garden of 10 Downing Street. In fact, we were right beneath the TV cameras and just along from the BBC commentary box for the event. Here’s a pic of the cameras as seen from our seats.

We were in place by about 9:20, and the parade was not due to start until 10:30, with the Queen not due on Horse Guards Parade until 11 o’clock. So, we had some time to waste, but we didn’t have the opportunity to get bored. One of the fun games I played was watching the “upper classes” struggling like you wouldn’t believe to find their correct seats!! There were a good dozen or more people who had to move because they had incorrectly identified their seats – I mean, how hard can it be? ;-) They have clearly not been to many football (soccer) matches!

We watched the parade ground being watered, and various guards taking their place at points around the parade ground. Before we knew it we could hear the first musical notes from the Massed Bands of the Guards Division as they marched onto the parade ground. And the ground very quickly filled up with the seven Foot Guards companies that were taking part, as well as the King’s Troop, the Household Cavalry and the Mounted Bands who all lined up in front of the Guards Memorial.

We heard screams coming from the route between Buckingham Palace and Horse Guards Parade, and guessed it was either Princes William and Harry or the Jonas Brothers! The two princes arrived on the ground in a horse-drawn carriage, together with their step-mother Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall. After they had taken their positions within the Horse Guards building to watch the ceremony, it was time for the arrival of The Queen and Prince Philip in another carriage, followed by Prince Charles, Princess Anne and the Duke of Kent who were all on horseback in fairly spectacular uniforms.

The Trooping the Colour ceremony takes about 75 minutes from the time of the sovereign’s arrival to her departure, and that time just flew by. The Colour is the name given to the standard of the regiment, used in times past as a rallying point during battle. The Colour is trooped in front of the Guards so that they could recognize it during any such battle. It is an even more amazing spectacle in real-life than it is on TV, and we were both marvelling at how well organized and directed it all was.

After the ceremony was completed, involving much marching back and forth, playing of regimental music and horses drawing artillery guns around the parade ground, the Royal party left to make their way back to Buckingham Palace. Before we knew it the parade ground was filled with people mingling as they discussed the wonderful display we had all just witnessed. Dori and I wandered on to the parade ground and took a few pictures and then decided to head over towards the Palace. The Mall is closed for the day of the Parade, and so we took the rare opportunity to stroll down the middle of the road heading to Buck House. It was a lovely, happy atmosphere and we were enjoying ourselves immensely.

As we neared the Palace, we expected the crowds to be too dense for us to progress but somehow they magically parted and we were able to make our way almost right up to the Palace gates. Just as we got there so the Royal Family emerged onto the balcony to watch the flypast by the Royal Air Force. Several aircraft flew directly down The Mall and over the Palace in salute to the Queen, including a Lancaster Bomber, a Spitfire and a Hurricane as well as more modern fighter jets such as Tornado GR4s and Eurofighter Typhoons. The flypast of 29 aircraft reached its crescendo with the Red Arrows, who trailed red, white and blue smoke as they roared over the crowds below. It was a superb finale to a wonderful day. We waved as the Royal Family moved back inside the Palace and then headed away to get something to eat before we returned home.

I mentioned to Dori while we were watching the ceremony that it all felt a little surreal – seeing something that I had grown up watching on TV and never once thought I’d ever get to see in the flesh. That surrealism was then surpassed by seeing the Royal Family waving from the Palace balcony, a scene that we have all seen many, many times before. I may have lived in England for over 40 years, but this was the first time that I have seen my monarch or many of the other members of the Royal Family (we had seen William and Harry before, at the Concert for Diana in 2007).

We got home in the evening, tired and weary from our day in London, but very happy that we had been witness to a centuries-old ceremony full of pomp and pageantry. It was a great day.

For even more pics, check out Dori's blog!