Farewell to the Queen

It is sometimes said that timing is everything, and so it was for us, that we were scheduled to be in London as commemoration activities for Queen Elizabeth 2 were taking place.

The morning of Wednesday, September 14, saw us driving from Totnes to Exeter to return the rental car (with a big sigh of relief and a blessed absence of scratches and dents), followed by a relaxing train ride from Exeter to central London. By 2 p.m. we were in our hotel room near the King's Cross/St. Pancras train stations (convenient for our Eurostar on Thursday morning) and watching the procession on TV as Queen Elizabeth's body was moved from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall. Nicely rested up, we put on our walking shoes and set out for those centers of activity. Walking the 3-miles one-way had its advantages--avoiding crowds on the subway and giving us the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with London neighborhoods.

Bloomsbury neighborhood-no problem. Crowds started getting heavier as we worked our way into Soho and Mayfair.

We passed this guy--Eros on the fountain in Piccadilly
Circus--as we walked through Soho toward Green Park

The new and the old--that was my impression as we walked. It's been
over two decades since we were in this part of London, and there's
been so much change that it did not feel at all familiar to us

Lon's thought had been that we'd work our way to the gates at Buckingham Palace to see all the commemorative flowers and messages that had been left. What we didn't realize was that those items had been cleared away from the fencing and moved to Green Park. Ah, well, after the summer we've had we're used to having to go with "Plan B." And Plan B was really no plan at all. There were so many people and so much security that it was just easiest to follow the crowd along whatever pathways had been mapped out. 

Defying "keep moving, keep moving" momentarily to snap this
view down The Mall toward the Admiralty Arch (in the other
direction was Buckingham Palace)

Flowers and notes surrounded the bases of many trees in Green Park

A brief pause as we made our way toward Buckingham Palace
(upper left of photo)

This is what "humans as lemmings" looks like 

Big crowds around the Palace of Westminster (also
known as the Houses of Parliament) and the iconic
Big Ben clock in the tower

In the middle is Westminster Hall, the oldest building in the Parliament
complex, and almost the only part of the ancient (11th C) Palace of
Westminster which survived a devastating fire in 1834. It is in this
hall that Queen Elizabeth 2 was lying in state

We had hoped to walk onto Westminster Bridge to catch a glimpse of the people lining up to pass through the Hall to pay their respects, but it was absolutely packed, and we decided that we'd had enough of crowds for one day.  As we headed north along Whitehall to find a place for dinner and then get back to our hotel, we were surprised at how relatively quickly the crowds thinned out. 

"The Women of World War II" monument on Whitehall/Parliament Street. Most people were being
kept to the sidewalks, but even so, it was not too difficult to walk. A wreath with the Queen's photo
was left at the base of the monument

  

A quiet shopping arcade in Covent Garden

After 8 miles of walking, and a lovely dinner at "The Alchemist" in Covent Garden, we were back at the hotel. Although we had to get up a bit early the next morning for our 8 a.m. Eurostar train, it was an "easy-peasy" kind of day. It was maybe a 10-minute walk from hotel to train station, fast processing through immigration at the station, and after an on-time, 2+ hour train ride we were back in Paris. A British rail strike previously announced for the 15th had been cancelled due to the death of the Queen, so everything ran smoothly.

We are now down to our final 2 weeks in Europe, and the cooler temperatures of autumn have arrived. We will be mixing "business with pleasure," with some small boat projects, including preparation for winter storage, and some local sightseeing.

Back to reality--folding myself into a pretzel on the helm in order to
tape window frames in preparation for painting the salon and 
lower passageway. One day of prep and one day of painting--all done!