Sheers Family OE 2012: We've Been to London to See the Queen . . .

The Girls Meet the Royals

And see her we did. We don’t know if any of you had the chance to watch the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee but if you did you may have seen us! On Tuesday June 5^th we were 4 of the 1.5 million people lining The Mall in London to watch the Queen return from lunch at Westminster to Buckingham Palace. It was an incredible, sometimes life threatening, scary, squashy, amazing experience and we are so glad we braved the English weather and stuck it out for the umpteen hours we spent standing on the street. The girls sat up on our shoulders so that they had a bird’s eye view of the whole affair. They took some great photos, some of which I will tag on the end of this post. After the Royals had passed in their carriages they made their way to the famous balcony at Buckingham Palace where they waved to the crowds (us) and watched the flyover of the Lancaster and Spitfires which was worth the wait. We made it to within 10m of the gates to the Palace and although we couldn’t actually see the balcony we knew when the Queen was waving because the crowd would erupt in cheers and spontaneous renditions of God Save the Queen. 1 million people were waving Union Jack flags whilst the remaining 500,000 people were tourists like us. Taashi managed to find a couple of flags on the ground which we still have today.

The 1.5 million people on The Mall

The photo Taashi took of the Queen.

The photo Taashi took of William, Kate and Harry.

We couldn’t have come to London at this time and not joined in some of the Jubilee Celebrations. Every car, house, shop front, street front, building and person is decorated in all that is British. Union Jack bunting adorns every single street throughout England. Oxford Street Regent Street Piccadilly Circus and all of Harrods windows, Hamley's Toy Shop and the Underground and Overground Stations are all decked out in red, white and blue. When we come back to London in a year’s time the city is going to look very different.

Just one of the many Brit carts scattered throughout the city.

Regent Street in its Union Jack splendor.

These street parties were held all over Britian.

Once again we have become Metro Train experts as we ride the London trains every day to and from our campsites at Abbey Wood and Henley-on-Thames into London. It takes about 30mins from Abbey Wood and 1hr from Henley and cost us £21.80 a day for Day passes for the 4 of us. If you convert this into NZ$ (which we try not to) it’s approx $44 a day (yikes) and as a result a big chunk of our budget has gone on just travel – however – it’s reliable and fast and gets us to every part of London we need to go. We’ve also discovered an amazing lunch deal at Tescos Metro in the city. For £10 the 4 of us can have chicken and salad sandwiches, chips or a chocolate bar and a drink of OJ each. Great value and keeps us going as we walk the soles off our shoes. Check out some of the sights we have seen throughout London. NB the puppets the girls have in some of the photos were bought at Harrods. Tilly’s is called Harrod and Taashi’s is Ruby London. The girls are going to see how many weird and wonderful places they can have photos taken of them during our travels.