London - you trickster!

A few days after arriving on the continent (isn't that an obnoxious phrase? The continent. Oh yes, I've been away. I was on the continent you see...If you read old English novels, it crops up a lot.) & thawing out from the cold of London, Amelia & I were chatting and I said "We should have just gone shopping right away and bought warm sweaters and scarves. It would have made everything so much more pleasant. Why didn't we?"

Well, first of all because the schedule didn't call for shopping - not that kind of shopping and not that early on in our stay. Secondly, because I detest shopping and try to avoid it if at all possible. Thirdly, because I kept thinking that the weather would improve, and by the time it was obviously not improving we were almost ready to leave and it seemed silly to buy sweaters to go to... the continent.

But the other reason is that London toyed with us. Oh yes, it teased us with promises of good weather, and it let the sun peek out at just regular enough intervals to keep us plodding along with the occasional shiver and sniffle.

Day Two is a good example. This day included:

Guided Royal Walk tour to see the changing of the guard

Trip out to Greenwich
-Cutty Sark
-Naval Museum
-Greenwich Observatory

Thames Boat Cruise back to Westminster

London Eye 

And you'll see from the pictures that the weather could not make up its mind what to do. Except blow. The wind was constant.

The guided Royal Walk Tour AND the Thames Boat Cruise were both part of our 48h Big Bus Tour ticket and I think that was SO worth it!

 

Back we are again at Trafalgar Square which was the meeting point for the guided tour. Look at the weird sky with huge dark clouds & the giant bright sun trying to break through. 

Admiralty Arch from the Trafalgar Square side. Look, blue sky above it, and the arch itself is partly sunlit.

Now we've walked through the arch & we're on The Mall, which is the road between Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. If you look closely you'll see the road is red - it's like that on purpose to look like the red carpet rolled out for royalty. The building in the background is part of the Admiralty buildings.  

I've turned around to look back the way we just came. 

Sun reflecting off my forehead.

Duke of York's Column. He was commander in chief of the British Army during the French Revolutionary Wars. Apparently when he died the entire army voted to forego one day's wages in order to donate to a monument in his honor. 

Further down The Mall are these statues. If you've seen The King's Speech, that's him & his wife, who was known later as the Queen Mum.

 These are mounted municipal police, beginning to clear traffic off The Mall in anticipation for the changing of the guard ceremonies. Our guide stopped to chat with several and they gave him information about what was happening & how the schedule was looking.
See how nice & sunny it appears? The guide explained to us that if it rains, they don't do a regular change and everyone was looking with concern at the sky because half the sky was brilliantly clear, and the other half was ominously black.

We walked a bit further up and saw the guards at Stable Yard Road. This is the entrance to Clarence House - current residence of the Prince of Wales & previous home to a variety of royals, including the Queen Mum.

It's started raining now but we hear some clip clopping & yes....

the horse guards come riding out! They're not going slowly either. It suddenly started to downpour and they came along at a fast clip, even before the cars were all cleared off the road.

Meanwhile, our guide had taken us to St James's Palace. This is actually the official residence of the sovereign (though none have lived there for many years), and it's the administrative headquarters of the royal family. Foreign ambassadors get credentials to the Court of St James. That balcony above the arches? THAT's where the announcements are made about a monarch dying and a new monarch ascending the throne, and that is also where the new monarch makes their first public appearance. 

And there, under the arches, is the band that's supposed to come out & play and do a bunch of pomp and circumstance stuff for the changing of the guard.
Except as you can see, by now it's raining hard. And they don't come out if it's raining. 

Here's our guide explaining it all to us & admitting that it's pretty silly that in a country where it rains a lot, they cancel this when it rains, but that's how it is & please don't blame him. And then he went on to explain that if they don't the full change, they still do something called a 'wet change' & so we'd see something. 

 So we stood in front of St James's Palace & waited.

Then the police came by & called down to guide: "Wet Change", and we were off.

 The guide took us at a brisk trot to Buckingham Palace, and specifically to Australia Gate.

 Blue sky. But see, the umbrellas are still up? That's not crazy people. It's actually still raining.

Then it stopped raining. Now it's just windy.  

We wait. I wish I'd brought my sunglasses.

Now something is happening!

 The police halting any pedestrians who might have tried to cross...

And here come the guards. No band & they're just marching briskly but there they go.

 

 

Notice how clear the sky appears to be. It changes a few moments later to a downpour as the horse guards come back to Buckingham. Check out the video below: 

Having seen as much of guards marching and trotting as we could that day, and having had enough of the crowds in front of Buckingham Palace, we quickly moved away and walked down Buckingham Gate which is a neat little narrow street. On one side are these quaint buildings. 

See the brass sails on the ship decoration under the bay window?

On the other side of the street are the bleak bare walls of the Wellington Barracks. (those of you who watched the slideshow of H's photos in my last post will have seen what they looked like from the tour bus)

A little further down Buckingham Gate.

And then we headed below to the underground, kept left as instructed, and took a train to Greenwich.

This is the Cutty Sark.
In its time, it was the fastest tea clipper on the seas.
The ship had been badly damaged in a fire a few years ago and had been in restoration. In fact, the day we came was the first day it was open to the public and there were still signs of the official reopening ceremonies that had clearly been held that morning. 

 

 

The glassed in part all around the ship is a museum and we had considered going in but in the end decided to just stroll quickly to the Naval Museum instead. 

 

But first we checked out the Greenwich Visitors Center.

Where you can get dressed up as a Tudor knight. 

And examine some other artifacts from Britains naval history. 

... more to come in a separate post!