This morning I set out with great intentions to watch the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace. The guy at the Guards Museum told me yesterday that the changing would taking place at 11 am and it would be the Coldstream regiment (in reds and bearskins), but it's best to be there a bit earlier. I got to the palace gate at 10:30 and there were several rows of people jammed up against the palace gate and fence already. The police and even some on horseback were on hand control the crowds. After waiting for what seemed an eternity, the drums grew louder and louder until the marching band approached. The crowd that had been waiting for more than half an hour jostled each other for a better location to snap pictures of the guards. I wasn't really a fan of being trampled on, so I stayed back and settled for not really decent shots. (But you could still make out the guards behind the iron rail fence.) I stuck around for another forty-five minutes. The actual changing of the guards, ie. switching the two guards standing in front of the palace from one regiment to the other, happened a good forty minutes into the whole ceremony and took only a couple minutes. The rest of the time was filled up with marching/parading/ceremony/band and it still was not over when I left. I'm biased here, but I wouldn't really go back to watch the parading had I known it would take so long and that there'd be such a crowd.
The Globe Theatre--yes, of Shakespearean fame--was a more rewarding experience. The current building was a replica of the original. It was built based of archeological digs, written descriptions. and historical illustrations. I went on the guided tour and we got to sit in on part of a rehearsal of Troilus and Cressida. Really cool to see professional actors work on their craft. I wasn't planning to go see Shakespeare on this trip, but after seeing the performance, I just might have to.
Thick black clouds rolled in late afternoon and the rain started around 5 pm. In fact there was thunder and lightning, and eventually hail. Pebble-sized hail in London in July. Way crazy weather! I was waiting on the street underneath some awning and asked the lady beside me whether or not this would be a common summer occurrence and she shook her head.
When the hail and rain subsided, my friend Graeme showed up. We had planned to go for a pint. Graeme and I used to work at Sandwell, but he moved over to London over a year ago to follow the love of his life. He wasn't really sure of where and which pub to go to, so we hopped onto the Tube and walked around for a while. Now, I haven't really figured out how to cross the street in London. Cars drive on the left side of the road, so usually pedestrians would need to look right first before crossing. But on top of this, London pedestrians don't typicaly obey walk signals. Jay-walking is the norm. But I usually don't jay-walk on my own, only do so when I'm crossing in a group. (Safety in numbers!) So when Graeme and I were walking, I was very much concentrating on chatting and not paying much attention to the traffic. Several times my instinct kicked in and I looked left before crossing and thought there was oncoming traffic and freaked Graeme out. And some times, Graeme had to stop me from crossing because there was a car coming from the right that I had missed. It's a wonder how I haven't been run over yet. And yeah, Graeme told me that cars have the right-of-way. Great!
So we found our watering hole in Victoria and lo and behold, there was an immense crowd outside the train station. Turned out the hail managed to compomise some of the glass in the station ceiling so it was closed. Hundreds (maybe close to a thousand) commuters were stuck in the middle of the afternoon rush hour. We heard some shouting going on, but understandable as I would be frustrated too. Many of the stranded ended up in the pub we were at, but not really an issue as we found a table shortly after. It was a good time catching up with Graeme. And it was interesting to see Londoners get unroudy for a bit, because they are oh-so-cool most of the time.
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