God Save the Queen

Lucky for us, today just happened to be the Queen's birthday! So what does the Queen do on her birthday? She has a giant parade with tons of pomp and ceremony. It was really exciting seeing all of the soldiers and cavalry marching in front of Buckingham Palace... and then.... the QUEEN! She wore a lime green outfit that made her easy to spot, even from far away. Out of the 7 of us that attended the parade, I think we got a few good pictures of them. We're also utterly convinced that we also have a picture of Prince William standing on the balcony of the palace. It made standing there waiting for two hours all worth while.

After the parade we got lunch a local sandwich shop. Cheddar cheese in British is white. It tastes a little different too. Then we went shopping at the Portabello Road market; some of the stuff is crap, but a lot of it is really nice. It would be a great place to go if I was really into antiques. As is, I ended up buying a necklace and a pashmina scarf.

Then we went to get some tea - more because it was raining and we were tired than because we really wanted tea, but the tea did turn out to be nice. It was peppermint! So, while we were enjoying a nice, quiet afternoon tea, a group of about 15 drunken rowdy British boys burst into the bar for a couple of beers and glasses of wine. Shortly after busting into the bar, they encroached upon our table to flirt and discuss the fascinating differences between Americans and Britons, including drinking games, teeth, and hats, among other things. Janet was the lucky favorite of the night and ended up getting more attention than anybody. The boys were nice though, and it was fun to talk to them, though their stay was short as they moved through the "holes" in pub golf. It's an intersting game really, in which one hops off the tube at 12 (though I thought it should be 18) different stops and goes to the first pub available at each stop. There are then an entire set of different rules for "holes" that are par 3, par 4, par 5, etc. The incident made our tea time far more entertaining than we ever could have expected. We also got a recommendation of a bar to go to tonight, which I should be heading off to shortly!