england # 7- victoooooooria, victooooooria….

You should really play this while viewing the pictures of Buckingham Palace and vicinity, to get the full effect:

 

It certainly was playing in MY head the entire time!

We set off bright and early for Buckingham Palace and Vicinity. It was yet another day when what we’d planned to do would, in reality, take about five days. We found that part really difficult– especially as the days passed and we kept thinking of things we HAD to do and see. And realizing how little time we actually had to do/see them in. At one point we parked ourselves in a pub and started madly making lists and assigning days to each attraction. That did work pretty well. Because, as we kept reminding each other, “We can’t see it all!!!! We have to PICK and CHOOSE!!!!” One disadvantage of a mid-October trip was that it gets dark so early. By 5:30 it was pretty dark, so even though we got out as early as we could, the days were short. But at least we did see a lot. A whole lot. And now we know about all the stuff we want to see NEXT time.

SO. We headed off to Buckingham Palace, planning to visit St. James and Hyde Parks, since they are close by Buckingham Palace. And then on to Kew Gardens. Our London Pass didn’t include Buckingham Palace tickets, although it did include the Buckingham Palace Mews (the stables) and Kew Gardens. It also included Windsor Castle and Hampton Palace, but they were farther out of London and we… SIGH… didn’t have time! But… WE COULDN’T SEE EVERYTHING!!

There were, of course, lots of cool buildings right around Buckingham Palace. Because… it’s London!! Everything is cool!

I liked the old/new contrast.

And of course Buckingham Palace was very impressive –

 

 

As was the huge statue in front of the palace-

 

And the accompanying statues all around –

 

Victoria is SO not amused –

 

The Bobbies were pretty friendly-looking, though.

 

The Royal Mews is right behind Buckingham Palace, and is actually the stables.  Hawks used to be kept at the stables way back in the 1300s, and were confined there at “mew”, or moulting time. Usually there are around 30 horses at the Royal Mews, but sadly most of the horses were gone to Windsor Castle the day we were there. There was a dignitary visiting. How thoughtless of them – we wanted to see the horses!

We saw three horses, who were too young to participate in Royal Dignitary Processions.

 

And we saw a whole bunch of Royal Carriages.

Unfortunately we were standing outside for the Royal Carriage tour, and OMG it was FREEZING and a little hard to throughly enjoy the information we were receiving about Royal Carriages. And I was disappointed about the lack of Royal Horses.

 

The horses don’t actually stay in here all the time — they do bring them in at Christmas and give them each a treat, though, which I thought was awfully sweet.

The Coronation Carriage was REALLY impressive. It’s in a building that has a removable outside wall – otherwise they couldn’t get it in and out. Obviously it doesn’t go in and out very often. Just for Coronations. I don’t think it’s even used for things like Royal Upcoming Weddings — I believe one of the other smaller carriages will be used for that. It’s got to be worth taking the wall down to use the Coronation Carriage.

Those are not real horses and riders. They looked real. They looked creepily real.

 

The Coronation Carriage is perhaps the most ornate thing EVER.

 

The Royal Mews tour took forEVER, so of course by the time it was done we realized we could do one park. Not all three parks. And we decided to go for Kew Gardens, since it was included in the Very Important In Decision-making London Pass Admission. We wanted to get our money’s worth! So off for Kew we headed. And that’s a post for another day. Maybe tomorrow. I should have lots of time to post LondonEntries in the next few days. Because we are in for… BAD WEATHER.

Yeah. Bad Weather. What did we have all last week??? What did we have week before last????? Hey, what time of the year is it??? Yeah, early December! And hey, we’ve already had oh, six or so inches of snow starting last weekend, which did not melt and is still all over the place. Obviously waiting for the next snow, as my grandmother used to say about snow that just hung around. And it snowed some the week before that, and all these snows are ALREADY blurring together in my brain. I’m not over last winter yet, and I do not know how I will take another Winter From Hell, especially since this one started before December even got going. We’ve  had a week of temperatures in the teens and single digits, and next week…. is supposed to be EVEN WORSE. Especially Monday. The Chancellor has already cancelled final exams on Monday, and moved them to Wednesday, since the forecast is for what’s essentially a blizzard. You can imagine the cries about that, since travel plans (aka getting-the-hell-out-of-NightmareCity-plans) are made and tickets bought and rides arranged etc etc. That’s what you get for coming to school in this place, kids!!! Graduation is Sunday and it’s looking pretty iffy too.

I will admit that going to work in the single-digit, howling wind, blizardlike conditions sounded a whole lot better after we found out our neighbor (of the Perpetually Screaming Children neighbors) couldn’t get her heat above the high 50s in her house, and her husband who works for Samaritan’s Purse and is now a State Senator for the Dark Side is out of town, so we carried our kerosene heater over (proving that liberal agnostics AREN’T always totally evil and in league with the devil). While showing her how to work the kerosene heater as her three small very bored very loud (but admittedly cute) kids shrieked and screamed and her very large very neurotic dog barked and worried, I thought, THANK GOD I GET TO GO TO WORK!!!! There are way worse things than fighting the sub-freezing temperatures and the snow and the howling winds —- like being on the fifth Housebound Day alone with the small bored screaming children and a furnace that’s not working. Hooray for work!!!! And front-wheel drive and snow tires!!!

Anyhow, my point, before getting derailed by my deranged reaction to the horrendo-weather, was that we’ll probably be snowed in again too from tomorrow evening till who knows when, so I should have some entry-making time. Provided we keep our electricity and internet. And sanity.