It feels good to sleep in this morning. Soon, I’ll be heading back to the Rubens so that I can be close by for the BBC concert in front of Buckingham Palace tonight, but there is no need to rush. I take my time getting dressed and then walk down the street to a small grocery store for a chocolate croissant and some orange juice. On the way back up to my room to get the luggage, I overhear the following conversation in the elevator:
A spry, older woman with an English accent says to her companion: “What are we doing today, then, going to the Golden Eye?” The companion says: “It’s the London Eye, not the Golden Eye. What do you think this is, James Bond?” And the woman says: “How do you know? Maybe he’ll be in there waiting for me!” I find it hard to suppress a laugh.
By the time I get back to the Rubens hotel and settle into a new room decorated in shades of silver and gold, I feel dizzy and my stomach is doing cartwheels. I enjoyed the pageant yesterday, but in truth I spent too many hours standing in the freezing cold and now I don’t feel well at all. And I’m not the only one. The BBC is reporting that the Duke of Edinburgh has been taken to the hospital with a bladder infection. He’ll have to sit out the remainder of the weekend’s events. Determined not to let that happen to me, I decide to skip my plans to see the Wallace Collection and lie down for a few hours instead.
It’s mid-afternoon by the time I venture out. I walk around the corner toward Victoria Station and stop at a Carphone Warehouse to buy a SIM card with a data plan for my iPhone from a nice young man named Quentin. From there, I open the London A-Z app on the phone and use its GPS to navigate my way down Grosvenor Place to Hyde Park Corner, and then along Piccadilly. All the while, to my right, I’ve been following the perimeter of the Buckingham Palace Gardens, and there is an extraordinarily long line of people waiting patiently just outside its stone walls. They’ve been invited to a tea party on the lawn.
I continue on past Berkeley Square to Oxford Street, intent on a little window shopping before a 5:30 PM reservation at Claridge’s. I have a tea of my own to attend, and given the state of my stomach, tea and sandwiches sound just about right.
Oxford Street is a riot of color on this Monday afternoon. The sidewalks are congested with shoppers and the road itself with red double-decker buses. Overhead, there is red, white and blue bunting, and row upon row of Union Jacks hanging between the lampposts on either side.
There is a car in the front window at Selfridge’s department store. It’s painted like the British flag and it’s being driven by a corgi. I wander inside and make my way to the food hall, where there is a replica of the state crown made entirely of jelly beans. There is also an aisle devoted exclusively to the “Foods of America,” which has me intrigued. I shudder when I see that we are associated so entirely with junk food—with Pop Tarts and Lucky Charms, marshmallow fluff and microwave popcorn.
I rest for a bit on a park bench in Grosvenor Square, near a quiet memorial to the British victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The clouds part to reveal a brilliant, blue sky, but it’s swallowed up again within minutes. I’m getting cold sitting here. It’s time to head to dinner.
The menu for my afternoon tea at Claridge’s in Mayfair is inspired by the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. It includes coronation chicken salad, a selection of sandwiches on artisanal bread, raisin and apple scones with Cornish clotted cream and Marco Polo jam, and a selection of British pastries decorated with gilded chocolate crowns. I don’t have the legs to walk back to the Rubens afterwards, so I take a taxi instead.
By the time I reach St. James’s Park, it’s just after 7:00 PM. I take one of the diagonal paths past the pelicans in the lake, intent on working my way over to The Mall, but there are barricades everywhere to control the crowds and I find myself pushed all the way down to the Guards Memorial. By now, the sky has cleared off properly and the sun is too enticing to resist. On a lark, I veer off course and head through the archway at Horse Guards Parade and emerge onto Whitehall. I’ve never seen London so peaceful and so entirely abandoned. I stroll down to Westminster Bridge, where a lone bagpiper is playing for no one in particular, and then back past the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. By the time I feel inclined to head back into the park, it’s been closed off completely by the police. The crowds have grown too massive to let anyone else in and I’m forced to navigate my way back to the Rubens along narrow back roads.
Though I intended to be on The Mall tonight, I’m happy to be back in my room watching the concert on TV, where the view is better and the surroundings more agreeable, if less electric. I watch as Gary Barlow and the Commonwealth band perform “Sing,” the official anthem of the Diamond Jubilee, and see Charles’ speech to the eighty-six year old Queen, whom he calls Mummy. I join in, too, when the crowd is asked to cheer for the absent Duke of Edinburgh so that he might hear their support in the hospital. The old codger is ninety years old, and yet they both stood in the freezing rain yesterday all the way down the Thames, refusing to sit down. Say what you will about the monarchy, but they have lived a long life in service to their country, and within the narcissism of the modern world that deserves admiration and respect.
The band is playing “I Vow to Thee, My Country” as the fireworks begin, and suddenly I feel the walls and windows in my room shake. Absorbed by the spectacle on television, I had forgotten—really and truly forgotten—where I was. I pull on my jacket and rush downstairs. I am out on the street in time to see the streaks of color and smoke high in the sky over Buckingham Palace, and in that moment I feel perfectly well and fully alive.
It’s been a long journey here, in so many ways, and the past year—like today—has not been precisely what I planned, but sometimes detours have rewards of their own.
The Independent Traveler 