Buckingham Palace

This weekend I spent some time in London and for as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to go to London. When I was a kid, this was because I was convinced that I would meet Harry Styles while visiting the city, but since then I have grown up, and realized that I would love to see the architecture as well as appreciate the city that so many of my favorite shows and movies were filmed in. 

The first place that we visited in the city was Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. This was one of the things that I wanted to see while in the city, because I knew that it was something that was unique to London, and this palace specifically. When we arrived, it was incredibly crowded and we had to fight to get a spot for the viewing, and even then, we could not see all that great due to the crowd. In the image, you can start to get an idea of just how big the crowd was at this event. 

The actual changing of the guards took much longer than I was expecting and there was more music involved than I had been anticipating. I was expecting some sort of music, but I was really just prepared for the British National Anthem, not for the guards themselves to be playing music on actual instruments. The ceremony itself took nearly an hour from the time that it started to the time that it concluded. During the actual ceremony there was not much happening for a large portion of the time, unless someone was talking, and I just could not hear them because I was too far away. It felt like I was just standing there watching them, just to watch them since I could not really hear anything. After they finished playing the music, it was pretty quiet until some guy started yelling. He was supposed to be yelling because he was giving the guards directions. 

While watching this ceremony, I was very warm, because the weather in London was wonderful while I was there. The poem "Easter 1916" by W. B. Yeats references the passing of time with a stone stuck in a river, unmoving, while everything around it changes. This reminds me of the guards at the palace. They have to stand guard, unmoving, while everything around them is moving and changing. They have to just sit around and watch people do things around them while they are forced to just sit there and watch it happen. 


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