Trooping the Colour Revisited

 


Today is Trooping the Colour and whenever I see it played on television each year, my thoughts go back to the time when hubby and I went to London to check it out in person. We went in 2009 and it was quite the experience. I'm not much of a royalist, but I like to check things off my list to experience while I'm living in England. I figure that I'll have a series of memories to look back on when I'm old and grey :)

If you'd like to check out my experience, you can find it here. It was quite a day! I took lots of pictures! :)

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

Remembering My Trooping the Colour Experience

Today in London, Trooping the Colour is being held. In fact it's happening right now as I'm typing this. I have it on television now. Watching it all has me thinking back to when we attended six years ago. Wow! Time flies! I can't believe that it's been that long ago.

Here's my post from 2009, complete with photos of the day along with a photo of the royal family at the end. I hope you enjoy going down memory lane with me. You can see my post HERE.

Trooping the Colour

Well let me just say first, we had a WONDERFUL time at Trooping the Colour! It was one of those days where you keep thinking, ‘I can’t believe that I’m here’. Our day started early. We caught the train at 7am and headed into London on Saturday morning. We had a nice ride into the city. Once we arrived at Paddington Station, we headed for the tube. We took the tube to Westminster. Here’s the view once we were above ground again. Do you recognize this fella? (smile)



We then walked around to the event site at Horse Guard’s Parade which is alongside St. James Park. The park is lovely. We timed things just right because there weren’t huge crowds when we got there and we were able to go through the security area quite easily. Here’s a view of the surroundings as we went along to get in line for security.




There were only a few people there when we arrived so we were able to soak it all in and enjoy the vibe. As I said, we timed it right though because people really began to arrive about ten minutes after we sat down and some people just made it in in time. We had to be seated by 10am. Here are a couple of photos of the scene before everything got going.




Here’s a photo of a Welsh Guard who was performing ushering duties and helping everyone find their seats.



We were sitting on the last row in our section, so we were situated right underneath the BBC box and sometimes we could hear them doing their commentary. Here’s a photo of some of the other various cameras that were perched behind us. I took this photo upside down.



And now I’ll give you a taste of how it all went, starting with the first band marching in. Here they are scattered around just for fun.




Here are a couple of photos of the Queen arriving and doing a ride around of the grounds. Behind her on the right on horseback, is Princess Anne, riding along in her dark uniform.




Here are a couple of more photos.





The Royal Standard (flag) is raised when she is in attendance. Here it is on the left.




After the whole spectacular display was over, we made our way onto the parade ground and watched our step due to natural “stuff” on the ground. (smile) We decided to go and walk along The Mall to see if we could just soak up some more of the atmosphere and possibly see the flyover of the military aircrafts.

This was a cool part of the day because we weren’t in any real hurry and we were just loving that we were getting the chance to walk right down the middle of The Mall on the way to Buckingham Palace. People had been lining the streets during everything and after the event was over, loads of people were walking around enjoying it all. Here’s a lovely view of our walk along in both directions, the first photo is towards the palace and the second is away.




We figured that the crowds would be huge down near the palace, but when we got there, people were milling around here and there and the crowd was loosely packed. So we kept getting closer and closer to the palace balcony. And then lo and behold, here came the Royal Family in all their glory onto the balcony and so I started snapping photos. Here’s the family photo. (smile)




This was a hilarious exercise because the sun was shining right into my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing, but somehow the photos came out pretty good. LOL. I was shocked. And for a moment I thought, I can’t believe this…it’s so surreal. Those are the real royals and not statues from Madame Tussauds museum. It was one of the most truly surreal moments of my life. When I came over to England a few years ago, it NEVER entered my mind that I would EVER see any of the royals. I never really expected anything like that. I had seen scenes like this on television back home and while I've been here, so it was great to see it all in real life.

Back to the Trooping the Colour event for a minute, Brit Boy and I found out that apparently 20,000 requests were made for tickets to Trooping the Colour and only 8,000 people were in attendance. And some tickets were given to VIPs, so the pool of potential tickets was even smaller, so we were just amazed about those odds. (smile)

As we walked away afterward, I told Brit Boy that I learned a valuable lesson from getting the tickets and from our unexpectedly great view of the Royal Family. I learned that you just simply have to go for WHATEVER you want in life and see what happens. You never know. I needed that lesson. What a great day we had!

Trooping the Colour, Here We Come!

I have some fabulous news! Brit Boy and I are going to see Queen Elizabeth in June. We’re going to Trooping the Colour. This celebration is the Queen’s official birthday parade and is held on a Saturday in June, every year. The Queen’s actual birthday is April 21st. This is a wonderful display of true pageantry and I can’t wait to be there to watch it all unfold. I sometimes can’t believe how things have been turning out for this American girl who still feels like a tourist sometimes :-) I come across to the other side of the Atlantic with no wish lists and through Brit Boy and me giving everything a try, we get in to see all the things I would have wanted to see if I’d had a wish list when I arrived. Who knew that being a plucky couple got you this far :-) Sometimes I feel like we ought to have our own reality show. LOL. Anyway, I’m very grateful that we are getting a chance to go experience something else great together. What a blessing. We definitely know how lucky this all is. Often when we get opportunities like this, it reminds me what happens when you put the effort out there in life to go for what you want...you never know what can happen :-)

Our tickets arrived yesterday. So when Brit Boy came home from work, I sprung the envelope on him. He blogged about it last night. We had to apply for the tickets through a public ballot, which is very similar to how we got tickets to Wimbledon. Here's the post about that. When we originally thought about going, we had figured that we would just turn up on the day and stand along The Mall, and see what we could see. But then we figured that we may as well apply to be put into the public ballot and see what came of it. Well, we got in and our tickets are ready and waiting for June :-)

This should be very cool, because we will see the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, and some of the other royals. Brit Boy and I saw Princes William and Harry back in 2007 at the Concert for Diana, so we may add to our list of royal sightings substantially in June. We have to dress up for the occasion, so Brit Boy will have to get all suited up and I will be getting to work on my outfit. Wish me luck! ;-)

So it’s an exciting time around the yellow house. I’ll definitely be sharing all the details from our day out on June 13th! Have a great day :-)