trooping the colour...

We actually wanted to catch the changing of guards at Buckingham Palace on Saturday morning. I was quite hesitant to still go through the trouble of squeezing our way through the London tube to Green Park, and then hike down to the Palace. It was already 11 am when we left home. And wasn't the changing of guards supposed to be at 11am? Hello, aren't we too late now??

Well, good thing Alan convinced me to go nonetheless. You see, one thing about Alan, sometimes the impossible does become possible. And it did that morning.

When we got to Buckingham Palace at 11.30am , we saw a couple thousands of tourists surrounding the whole palace gate, watching expectantly. Now, I thought changing of guards was long over. It turned out to be our lucky day. This was what we saw at about 12 nn.

We caught Trooping the Colour on rehearsal! (Hee, something we only found out at the end of the day when we got home. Apparently, Trooping the Colour is aka The Queen's Parade - meant to celebrate the Queen's birthday. Though her birthday is on the 21st of April, the parade usually takes place in June when good weather is often promised and the Queen herself will ride in a carriage into the palace to inspect her troops. And that will happen next Saturday on the 16th.)

Didn't I say that Kristin is our lucky star? Changing of guards I've seen before... but Trooping the Colour, no, not until today! I think we've seen enough of the Queen's troops for the rest of our lives. We were indeed very fortunate coz tickets to such a parade were balloted and the balloting has long closed. The public can only watch the parade from the mall or on TV next Saturday. Ok, we still didn't see the Queen herself. But it was a colourful treat to the eyes of many tourists, including ours too!

We didn't do much shopping this time round in London. But we certainly did more sights.