Royal Wedding 29th April 2011

The Royal Wedding - Yes we were there!!!

Well, what a fabulous day, albeit overcast and cool. 

We have just returned from the mall. We got up at 5:30 am to go the train to Victoria station and walk through to the Mall. There were thousands of people, all enjoying themselves.  Even at 7 that morning we were 10 people behind the barrier, no chance on seeing anything.  But it was such a buzz being there.  When we got off the train at Victoria we were handed periscopes and large flags courtesy of OK Magazine, which was great.  

Girls with veils

What a buzz on the Mall

Procession on Whitehall

Roy on Regent Street

Roy and Susan on Regent St

Throughout St. James Park, people kept asking where did we get our flags and periscope, by this time most of the flags were now being sold at l pound each and more, no periscopes to be found anywhere!   There was so much press there, mostly from the US but lots of other countries were there and so many cameras. 

What we saw on the Mall

It was difficult to choose a "perfect" spot as we were 10 deep. We stand behind the people who have camped out all night or maybe longer and they complete their breakfast. There are two girls dressed in wedding dresses who are right up to the barriers and drunk as skunks, staggering around and falling onto people. To our right there is a family with 2 small children dressed as Disney Princesses, there are 6 girls from USA with exciters and wedding veils pinned to their heads. There is a family covered in union jacks and wild red white and blue wigs. One woman brings a stool to stand on and has a very large periscope.

We watched a succession of black windowed cars go by at their prescribed times and we read from the newspaper which member of the royal family the cars may contain. We stood there with our flags waving and we all cheered at anything that moved. We cheered when the street cleaner came by, we cheered when the armed police came by and as each car that whisked by either with a pennant or not everybody cheered and went wild when the Queen's car came by. The atmosphere was electric, very cheerful and happy. a wonderful throng. For security reasons there was an absence of horse drawn carriages, just buses and blacked out cars
At about 10:45 most of the important people were already at the Abbey so we decided to come home as we could not see anything with all the flags waving. We would have to wait another 2 1/2 hours to see the royal coach return after the ceremony and we were not sure that we might see anything. Anyway, we ate our sandwich on the train (about 11 minutes), got home and enjoyed the rest of the wedding on the TV.