London Places: Buckingham Palace

When Jenny visited me in England last summer, we got to spend a week staying with a friend in London. We went out every day & wandered around our favourite London places (all the old haunts, as Anne Shirley would say) & discovered a few new ones too.

And of course, what's a visit to London without a trip (or 2, or 3) to see Buckingham Palace.

Even the details on the gates & statues are regal:

There are beefeaters:

And the rather imposing Queen Victoria:

The Union Jack was flying that day, rather than the Royal Standard, so the Queen was not in residence.

Before 1997, the flagpole would just be empty when it wasn't flying the Royal Standard. But in the days after Diana died, reporters were suddenly asking why the Queen didn't have a flag at half mast over Buckingham.

The reason was simple: she wasn't there, so there was no flag to lower. Even when a king died, the flag had never been lowered.

But after a few days of heated press attention, the Queen broke with tradition & on the day of Diana's funeral the Union Jack was seen at half mast over the palace. There's been a flag flying there ever since.

Not all the Queen's guards wear red uniforms & furry hats:

But some of them do:

Here's the balcony where we occasionally see the royal family, during weddings & Trooping the Colour:

The thing I like about Buckingham Palace, the Mall, & the whole area around it is that it always seems kind of peaceful, a slightly calmer oasis right in the middle of bustling London. Not a bad place to live, I think.

As city homes go, you could do worse.