« Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum + St. Paul's Cathedral | Main | Best birthday ever! »
January 06, 2006
Buckingham Palace + Westminster Abbey
The famous changing of the guards in Buckingham Palace. The photo depicted a contingent of cavalry striding into the royal palace as the whole ground was filled with British royal guards undergoing inspection and changing shifts. Tons of action in this big scale ceremony; it somehow reminded me of my St. John days of yore...
December 21, 2005
The time was 10.20am. We were awefully late for an arranged meet-up with my bro at the tube station. After frantically searching for him around the area, we decided that he must have gone to Buckingham Palace on his own. Upon reaching the royal abode, where a sea of crowd had already congregated, we walked through the pavement, squinting our eyes trying to look for my dear bro. Where could he be?
At last, we abandoned the search mission; the Changing of the Guard ceremony caught our attention instead. We took a number of photos and videos as a fresh contingent of royal guards marched into the palace ground, while the 'retiring' contingent went through a strict foot drill regimen and uniform checking. Same went to the new contingent before both contingents' commanders marched, stopped tete-a-tete, spoke few words, then marched back. At the same time, a contingent of cavalry entered the palace too. The crowd blocked most of my view, and after a while we gave up watching the rest of the ceremony.
With my missing brother still in mind, I went to the nearest phone booth (the red iconic one) and called his dorm. He wasn't in. (Apparently, in my bro's story recount later, he was on his way to our hotel to look for us. Ouch!) So I just left a message asking him to meet up at the Meridian dial near Parliament Square after lunchtime. Luckily he received the message and reunited with us.
The tour continued in Westminster Abbey. Hyped up by 'Da Vinci Code' fanfare, I was extremely excited to finally find myself stepping into the final showdown scene between Robert Langdon and the Teacher. The abbey was divided into chambers, each filled with tombs and carvings for the dead. We found a small stone labeled, hillariously, 'press to enter' in each chamber. It was magnificent, but I couldn't relate anything I saw to what I knew, save the tombs of Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Mary. Joyce was astonished to find that the crest of her college was crafted on a tomb, along with those of other colleges in Yale. It's soo cool.
After that, we went to Trafalgar Square again. This time we managed to scrutinize the whole plaza. Bro noted a subtle yet major difference in the statues erected at each corner of the plaza. Instead of warriors on galliant horses, the statue in the eastern corner was a mortified little woman with deformed limbs. Bro said something about being a feministic symbol. I was enjoying the Christmas carol in the middle of the square though..
Soon after, we traversed to a hip area with lots of cinemas and musical theatres. We were near London's famous West End. We went into a souvenir shop and bought stuffs back for friends. I bought some t-shirts saying "My friend went to London and all I got is this LOUSY t-shirt!". Then we went to Chinatown! It was lively and busy and chinese-looking with the red lanterns and chinese characters on each shop, but the food was a tad exorbitant. We went to MARA cafeteria near Paddington Station instead for a nice malay meal! It was superb; how ironic that at this time last year I was so sick of Shah Alam's malay food.
To be continued>>
Posted by peixin at January 6, 2006 10:35 AM