Buckingham Palace - September 8, 2022

In case you're keeping score at home, this trip was to Paris, so this blog post is likely confusing. We carved out one day to hop on an EasyJet to London Gatwick, bum around London a bit, and then take the Chunnel home under the English Channel.

We had tickets to the first tour of the day at Buckingham Palace, and then rode a Tootbus around London until our train left St. Pancras in the evening to take us back to Paris. The date was September 8, 2022. I don't know if you're great with dates in British monarchy history, but what was notable on that very day was that Queen Elizabeth II died after the longest reign in UK history, and second longest in world history.

She was in Scotland at Balmoral when she passed, but we were just leaving the gardens of Buckingham when it was announced she was ill. Then, we were just getting through customs at St. Pancras to go back to Paris when it was announced she had passed away. We made friends with some Brits who were also stuck at the train station due to a late train, and discussed the situation through their eyes. It was a fairly quiet, somber occasion as you could tell the news was falling over the public.

You're not allowed to take photos inside of the Palace proper (although I did on a later trip), so here are several photos of the Queen Victoria Memorial, the Mall area, and the front gates of the palace - I do have some from the back gardens near the gate, as well.

The front balcony of Buckingham Palace

The sky here is so dark because it was about to rain off and on for the next ten hours.

Ho, ho, ho, who's this? The buttress of Windsor (loosely).

I love this gate.

The "Agriculture" statue and lion are looking pretty badass from this angle.

This is the "Motherhood" marble statue in Trafalgar Square's Queen Victoria Memorial. Atop is the gilded Victory, Constancy, and Courage representations that make up the characteristics of a good queen. I googled this.

See, I wasn't lying - that's my hand. I've shown those truly incredible thumbs here before.

C was obsessed with Royal Guards around this time, so I got him a bunch of photos and then a child-sized hat of his own in the Palace gift shop that he later wore for Halloween.

I had a ton of people joke when I got back, asking if I had something to do with the Queen's passing. No... But.

What's really weird is that, when we were in the Throne Room looking at the throne, I distinctly thought, "Man, this is weird, literally any day she could pass away. I could be looking at the throne on the last day of her reign." (I'm not a witch or anything, that I know of.) Not that I'm a huge fan of the royals or monarchies in general or anything, but I suppose it's sort of like when I was young and Johnny Orr had been the ISU basketball coach for as long as I could remember. I knew intellectually that there had been coaches before and that he could retire or get fired or quit or whatever, but it was all I knew so it was really weird when he retired. So I guess that's the best analogy I have for how odd it was to me in that moment realizing that this person who had been a figurehead for forever was mortal, finite.

Anyway, related, here is C as a Royal Guard wearing his Palace-purchased royal guard hat a few months later for Halloween.

This may be my favorite of C's Halloween costumes. I'm not sure. But it's up there. Also, that hat was a huge pain to get home in my carry-on.