The Palace and the Beer Festival
Post date: 07-Aug-2009 21:14:16
At 10:40 AM, Colin and I arrived at Buckingham Palace to witness the changing of the guard. There were already at least a thousand people crowded around the gate to the palace and across the road from the palace on either side. Colin managed to find us a spot on top of the fence across the road for the palace. We sat there in the crowd waiting for the parade to start. At 11:20 AM we heard a band off in the distance and then we saw the British guards and the military march into one side of the Palace. Ten minutes later the next group came marching in past us. We also saw some knights (probably not what they're called but it sounds cooler) on horse back.
At noon, we headed through the crowd to purchase tickets to see inside Buckingham Palace. We waited in a huge line for over an hour to get tickets for today. We spent £34 on tickets just to see the State Rooms. They were magnificent. I would have loved to go to a ball in the palace. The Palace has 78 bathrooms and 249 bedrooms. Many of the State Rooms contain 20 foot long antique couches. I swear at least 16 people could sit on one of them. The staircases were all covered in red carpet (see mom and dad you can just tell people the red carpet in your basement is for royalty).
Queen Elizabeth was the same age as me, 27 when she was
sworn into coronation in the throne room (the only picture we managed to sneak that actually turned out). I took notes while we toured so we managed to get his picture by me holding up my notebook while Colin snapped.
In the Blue Drawing Room, the ceiling contains various plaster figurines including Shakespeare. This room has a beautiful view of the garden and gorgeous thick blue curtains with gold tassels. The White Drawing Room has a secret entry door on the wall behind the end table with a mirror. The objects (sculptures, but everyone calls them objects) are glued to the table so they don't fall off in mid-rotation.
We were lucky to see the current exhibit of the summer Queen and Commonwealth: The Royal Tour that displays 100 gifts that were presented to the Queen by the people of the commonwealth. The following gifts were given to the Queen from Canada: A totem pole and peace pipe from the first nations in B.C. in 1971.
After we cruised through the 19 state rooms, we strolled out through the garden (where we were actually allowed to take pictures) and then we headed to the British Beer Festival in Earl's Court.
We paid 20 pounds to get in, but once we were in everything was really cheap. Steak and Kidney pies 3 pounds, 1/2 pint of beer from anywhere in the world $1.40. We rented our beer glasses, but received our money back once we turned them in (very environmentally conscious. I was impressed).
We sampled many different beers from Britain and our last two beers were from Germany. Colin had the 11% Tsarina Esra Reserva which had a wonderful dark chocolate taste but was way too strong. I had the Banaorama beer which tasted like bananas and was nice and light like a cooler. In addition to drinking lots of beer, we scarfed down chips, wasabi peanuts, shrimp, and thai food. It was a great three hours. We also listened to an Irish band called Fiddler's Feast. My Dad would have loved the accordion. In our tipsy state we especially enjoyed our tube ride back to our homestay.
All of the pics from this day can be found here:
