What do you give the woman who has everything, at least if that woman is the British Monarch? Well, you give her yet another castle, this one up in Scotland, so she can go "on holiday" in August like the rest of her subjects, then you throw in another month of time off for good measure. The benefit to working class sods? Well, they don't get to vacation in a castle, but at least they can tour Buckingham Palace's "State Rooms" (that's where Queen greets and feeds important personages, hands out titles to rock musicians and soccer players, holds high-level meetings with heads of state, and does all of her "open to the press" for "photo op" chores. If you happen to be a Yank from a former colony in town during the queen's absence, you can join all those over whom HRH has at least titular dominion, and snoop about the joint. (Alas, the Queen's "private apartments" are like her private parts: Not open to public view. So you don't get to check out what's in her dresser drawers, closets, or refrigerator, and what she's had Prince Charles set up to record on her TIVO machine).On our last trip to London three years ago, we planned on taking the grand tour of the palace during the last week of September. But Queenie came home early (maybe those fickle Scottish trout stopped biting, or she tired of haggis for breakfast every day and longed for a full English start to the day, including those wonderful kippers), so we commoners were out of luck. This time we booked a "Royal Day Out" (combo tour of the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace, the adjacent Queen's Gallery where parts of the Royal Collection of art is on exhibit, and the adjacent Royal Mews (parking garage for carriages and stables for horses that pull them).
After an hour poking around in the Mews, we picked up a free audio guide, and joined what seemed to be the entire population of the UK not in Scotland with the Queen, or working "The City" that day, for an hour and half walk through of the palace. The interior of Buckingham Palace doesn't look much different from the palaces of Versailles near Paris, or the Schonbrunn summer "home" of the Hapburgs in Vienna: Lots of fancy furniture, big crystal chandeliers, red carpets, gilt do-dads, and other arsty stuff scattered all about. The walls are covered with giant oil paintings of important ancestors, or works by "The Great Masters" of Western Art. However, what makes "The BP" different from these other "monster homes" is not that it got a special dispensation from the local planning rules and regs, but that that living (as opposed to deceased) "royals" live in the 492 room, 240 bedroom mansion which still remains a "working ranch".
After lounging around under a big marquee tent at the back of the palace for lunch, taking our sweet time to devour a disgustingly decadent dessert, we discovered that the route to our next stop (The Queen's Galleries, where parts of the vast and priceless "Royal Collection" of art that is not at the moment tarting up the nine royal residences, is on display) was not a hort straight-ahead as the crow flies walk, but instead required a fast-paced a wild-goose-chase run around the edge of the thirty acre Royal Gardens. Unfortunately, we had only 15 minutes to make the 30 minute hike to the galleries which are usually open to visitation on a fairly strict timed-admission only basis (you snooze, you loose both your spot in line and the Pounds Sterling you plunked down for the tickets). Lucky for us, we were only a few minutes behind our scheduled admission time, and the large crowds we encountered in the State Rooms were off playing snooker or drinking at the nearby pubs.
The whole show is run by a group of "wardens". They are not like the wardens of U.S. prisons, but insteaad are akin to docents at many of our American museums. Some are retired from other professions, others are college students. But all are employees of (not unpaid volunteers for) The Royal Collection. After the hubbub of the State Room tour, the Galleries were a quiet sanctuary, filled not only with paintings bigger than the side of most American tract homes, but other nifty brick-a-brac as well. One of my favorites was a large "mantle clock" (well, maybe if you owned a palace it could be a mantle clock), with painted paper (sort of like fancy wallpaper) sides offset by gilded trimmings. It is just one of 1,400-odd historic and artistic timepieces all of which are kept on Greenwich Mean Time by a staff of clock experts.
Finally, about 4 pm, we left Lizzie's Lair and headed across Green Park in slow, but steady rain, and retraced our path through the Underground back to our hotel. We'll back back when BP is turned into timeshares so we can buy a piece of the palace for ourselves.
Tomorrow: Off to Prague.
