Did a few loads of washing this morning, grateful to be staying somewhere, we can do it. It is not going to be so easy for most of the holiday.
We have a Sandeman tour of London at 10am this morning. We caught the bus again on Park Lane, near the Dorchester hotel, to Covent Garden then walked to the Apple store for the start of the tour. It should have been a few minutes walk – took us at least 10! And that is with GPS ??
We met our guide, Ben he is doing his masters in playwriting and does the tours to support himself. We have done a few of these tours around the world. Our guides have usually been students – often history majors. They are advertised as ‘free tours’ . At the end you pay your guide what you think they are worth. There were 18 people in our group from all over the world. They were mostly young people, less than 30 and another couple our age. Every tour like this that we have been on has been brilliant, hoping for the same today.
We learn London is 2000 years old and 9 million people live here. Our tour today covers the City of Westminster the Inner London borough that also holds city status. It occupies much of the central area of Greater London including most of the West End.
We start in Trafalgar Square, it is the peoples square, VE Day was celebrated here. It is now an art space, the statues in each corner change regularly. Its name commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar. A British naval victory in the Napoleonic Wars over France and Spain that took place on 21st October 1805 off the coast of Cape Trafalgar. Nelson’s Column the monument in Trafalgar Square, built to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. It was constructed between 1840 and 1843 and is 52 metres high. A quote that has been used often and attributed to Nelson is inscribed at the base of the column, ‘England expects every man will do his duty’.
Next we walked to Admiralty arch, it is going to be turned into a 6 star hotel. There are 2 apartments selling there at the moment for £150m, that is an expensive piece of real estate!
We stopped at the horse guard, to watch the Horses do a face off with another group of horses. Horse Guards Parade, is a large parade ground off Whitehall in central London. (We are certainly covering the Monopoly board while here!) not as many people watch this, was interesting to hear the history, it began in 1660, with King Charles the II, and is part of the Changing of the Guard ceremony, it was easy to take photos.
Next we crossed over Pall Mall, a grand street in the St James’s area of the City of Westminster. It connects St James’s Street to Trafalgar Square. The street’s name is derived from ‘pall-mall’, a ball game played there during the 17th century.
We walked to St James palace, built in 1530 for Anne Boleyn, it was used as a Palace until the 1830’s, when Buckingham Palace was then used by Queen Victoria. Today is 200 years since her birth.
We saw Clarence House where Prince Charles & Camilla live, it is on Pall Mall too.
Ben did a funny skit near here, with 6 people from our group, including Greg which told the story of Henry the 8ths wives. Greg was Catherine Howard, his 5th wife, who Greg reminded me was the youngest and most beautiful ???, after being at the Tower a few days ago, Greg knew his head was going to be chopped off! ?
The Queen is at Windsor at the moment. The British flag was flying, as the Queen is not in residence. When she is in, the Royal Standard flag is flown. This started in 1997 after Diana died, the people wanted the British flag flown at half mast. But the Queen was at Balmoral, so the Queen started using the Royal Standard when she was in residence.
The Queen now spends less than 2 days a week at Buckingham Palace. Most of her time is at Windsor.
Buckingham Palace is valued at, 2.4 billion pounds, it has 44 football pitches of space behind it! The Queen has the largest art collection in world. Worth over 10 billion pound.
There are 800 rooms in Buckingham Palace, but a small section is being renovated, so there is no room for Donald Trump to stay when he visits!
Ben told us there are no flowers in green park which is next to Buckingham Palace. Charles the II was plucking flowers for his mistresses there, so his wife had them all taken out.
Our tour finished at 12.30pm, we managed to walk home in 17 minutes, much better than yesterday, over an hour after taking a few detours!!
In the evening we caught the bus into Victoria Palace theatre to watch Hamilton. The theatre was renovated by Cameron Mackintosh, 2 years prior to this production of Hamilton at a cost of £60m. It is a gorgeous, very elegant theatre of bygone times. The best I have been in. There was much anticipation to seeing Hamilton after B & S spoke so highly of it after seeing it in New York earlier this year. I will leave you to read what it is about, but if you enjoy musical theatre even the tiniest bit, save your pennies and go and see it when it comes to a theatre near you. Everything about it was brilliant, the story, singing, dancing acting, costumes. Hamilton, takes musical theatre to another level. Bravo.
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What a very wonderful time you’re both having! I’m so pleased you enjoyed Hamilton as much as you did, other productions will need to lift their game in the future ?
Yes, I think Musical Theatre has been changed forever.