8/16 (Sunday) - Buckingham Palace

Today we had reservations for tours of Buckingham Palace.  The first stop was the Queen’s Gallery. 

The Royal Family has an extensive collection of masterpieces and a selection is on display to the public in the Gallery.  The current exhibition was on Gardens in both paintings and tapestries.  (As if we hadn’t seen enough gardens while in England). 

The pieces covered a wide range of periods such as Tudor,...

Georgian,...

and water gardens.

The next stop was the Royal Mews, home of the horses, carriages and cars used by the Royal Family.  We went through the stables area but most were empty (did see a couple of Windsor Grays later in the tour). 

There were several coaches on display including the Irish State Coach often used by the sovereign to travel from Buckingham to the Palace Westminster for the opening of Parliament.

The Diamond Jubilee Coach (or State Coach Britannia) was built to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's 80th birthday.

But the real eye catcher was the Gold State Carriage, built in 1762 and used by every British Sovereign since George IV for the ride to their coronation.  Talk about a lot of gold.  The carriage is so heavy that it requires 8 large horses to pull it at no more than a walk.

Subsequent research revealed that the King/Queen can use eight horses to pull their carriage while Prince's can only have six and nobles four.  One must have ones rules.

Last stop was the State Apartments.  Absolutely spectacular but, again, no pictures. 

Probably the most interesting part of the State Apartment tour was the ballroom/dining room.  It was set up as for a banquet that had been held for dignitaries from Singapore.  There was a time-lapse film showing of the setup of the tables and room...it took three days to set everything up.  Each place setting is set up using measure devices to assure that each place setting is set up at the exactly correct spacing and each item it in exactly the right position. 

Each setting had six glasses, 7 pieces of silver, and its own butter dish.   There were huge flower bouquets and gold statuary distributed along the lengths of the two tables plus the head table.  For that particular banquet there were 9 service stations with 5 attendants at each to attend the 170 guests.  Entertaining in Royal Style.

There is a smallish café on a large terrace at the back of the Palace and overlooking the garden lawns.  So of course we finished the visit by having lunch at Buckingham Palace. 

Then it was a walk through the edge of the gardens to the exit.

Our walk to the Tube took us past the Wellington Arch.

Then it was on to the hotel for packing.