A Walk in the Park

When it’s not tourist season, the Guards only get changed on even-numbered days. So today was the day for us to do the traditional Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palace. We arrived early, staked out a good spot, and waited for the big event. We stood, we sat, we held our ground as other late-comers tried to weasel their way into a good spot. And finally a band came marching down the street, and a group mounted on horses, and there was much shouting (of orders), and a bunch of marching around, and to tell the truth, I’m not really sure when the Guard was actually changed! It was sort of a great big non-event!

Right across the street is a great big park. We are off to see the Princess Diana
memorial and Kensington Palace. They are both at the other end of the park. And we’re not talking about just one park—there are actually three parks back-to-back: the St. James Park, Hyde Park, and then Kensington Park. Maridee says, “Let’s walk through the park”, and so off we go. Talk about a walk in the park!! I’ll bet we walked ten miles today! (Maridee’s comment here: On the map they looked close enough together and I thought it wouldn’t be that far! My fault.)

While we were at Buckingham Palace, we noticed a big group of German students—probably high-school aged. It seemed everywhere we went today, they were there. While we were walking—they we walking. When we visited a memorial, they were there. Anyway, we came upon a war memorial tribute to the Canadians. It was a cool water feature. If you picture a large, black marble triangle slab polished smooth, and about 25 feet long and maybe 10 feet wide it was laid down almost flat—maybe a five degree tilt. Water was introduced at the top of the triangle and flowed down towards the base where Canadian maple leaves were cut into the stone. It was so flat that you could see the ripples in the water moving slowly down the triangle, kind of in slow motion. So all these German kids were sitting around the memorial eating their lunch and many of them had thrown their sandwiches on the memorial. I’m not sure why they did that. Were they feeding the ducks or were they showing some kind of protest (the War WAS against Germany).



Well we finally arrived at the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain (also in the park). It also was more of a water feature than a fountain. It was a large (maybe a 100 yards) sort of circular channel (concrete) that had grass in the center and paths all around. There were sections where the water runs fast and others where there are obstacles in the channel creating small rapids, and there was another area
where there was a sort of water fall. It was very nice. A thought came to mind when you view it that it sort of reflected her life while married to Prince Charles.


Next, we trekked on to Kensington Palace, which is where Prince Charles and Diana lived. We went on the tour which takes you through the “older” areas of the palace. Lot’s of Kings and Queens and Princes and Princesses in the past have lived there before the move to Buckingham Palace. As they said, there have always been Royals living at Kensington. The tour took us through some of the old bedrooms and halls. There was one area in tribute to Diana showing some of the portraits taken, and some of her dresses. Of course the tour didn’t go anywhere near where anyone is currently living (or in the last 200 years).


Our feet hurt, we are tired and tomorrow we might just take it easy! Print this post