Bolger Family Travels: A Change-Up On The Changing Of The Guard

I wanted Rick and Sandy to see the Changing Of The Guard for several reasons:

We don't have anything like it in the United States. (Congratulations to the "No Kings" protestors -- we haven't had a King or Queen since the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3,1783 in, well Paris! And the protests have made sure we have switched from an elected President as the chief executive to a leader of a country based on no other reason than hereditary succession, aka being born with a crown in their crib.);
It's a neat ceremony;
It's a good way to see Buckingham Palace without having to take the mind-numbing tour of the State Rooms;
It's a taste of the royals by only needing to dip a toe in the water of the pomp and circumstance.

I figured we would have to do the thing where you get to the palace fence at least an hour beforehand to watch the official ceremony in the forecourt. But, reading Rick Steves on the Changing, he advised joining a tour that follows along the route of the guards from St. James Palace, and then over to the Wellington Barracks.

There's plenty of pomp and circumstance to see doing that, even if you focus on following the processions instead of the ceremony within the Palace courtyard.

I went to the Fun London Tours website and booked us (well in advance) on the tour. It lasted nearly two hours.

Here's how the website bills it:

The most exciting way to see the ceremony!

This is the London walking tour which will ensure you are in the best position possible to see the extraordinary Changing the Guard ceremony while avoiding the crowds at the gates of Buckingham Palace. Rather than standing still for hours, we see various stages of the ceremony, including the inspection, Old Guard, New Guard, Palaces, and even march alongside the Guards and Ceremonial Bands!
Please note this tour requires a good level of mobility as we will be marching alongside the guards, and there is at least one set of steps to navigate.

And, that sums it up pretty well. We met at Piccadilly Circus, in front of the Criterion Theatre by the Eros Statue. I put the time the tour started on the itinerary as 9:35. As we arrived at 9:25, I told Carol she had time to go to Boots Pharmacy really quickly to get more of the great European cold medicine that we can't buy in the States because it's made with pseudoephedrine, a key ingredient in making crystal meth (don't worry, there's no Breaking Bad type stuff in my background.)

Given the many people who have died from meth, or at the very least ruined their lives thanks to it, I get why it's not sold in the States, but it's no longer part of American cold medicine, American cold medicine has one relatively unappealing problem -- it doesn't work worth a darn.

Anyhow, Carol went off to buy more illegal drugs from a legal pharmacy (Editor: That's not an entirely accurate description of the transaction -- it's not legal in the US, but is in Europe). Well, it turns out 9:25 was the start time for the tour and I screwed up the itinerary by ten minutes.

We started the tour, marching down to a statue dedicated to the guards, and I was frantically trying to reach Carol. She had her phone set on silent, so paid no attention to my increasingly desperate attempts to contact my wife. Fortunately, when she came out of Boots and didn't see us, she reached for her phone and called me.

Men, you know women tell us to chill when they mess up a schedule and how annoyed women can be when we mess up the schedule? Carol was the latter. The good news is, she did catch up to the group (which, by the way, is limited in size, so it's not a mass of people).

Our next stop was by a statue of Prince Frederick, the Duke of York. As the second son of King George III (yes, THAT King George), he wasn't most militarily astute Commander-in-Chief of the British forces during the Napoleonic Wars, but he made many reforms and administrative changes that made the British a much more effective fighting force and helped Napoleon meet his Waterloo at, well, the Battle of Waterloo.

Please pardon this interruption

to bring you a King George III/

Hamilton gif. Travel bloggers: It's

important to use Hamilton and

Minion gifs whenever appropriate.

From there, we trooped over to St. James Palace (which I had actually never seen before) where the incoming guards marched into the courtyard and, serenaded by a band, headed down Marlborough Road to the Mall.

Our guide Emily, a Canadian woman who had been doing these tours for nearly three years, headed us off a bit ahead of the band/guard so we could see them make the turn on to the Mall. Emily expertly cut us through St. James Park over to Birdcage Walk and the Parade Ground of the Wellington Barracks to see the Nepalese Gurkha unit at the end of their "Fit for Role" inspection, and their high speed marching over to Buckingham Palace.

If your goal is to watch the goings-on inside the Palace courtyard, I'd recommend the "get there an hour or more early for a spot as close to the fence as possible" because we couldn't really see through the crowds to what was happening inside.

But all four of us loved the tour and would recommend it. It is a great way to see the Changing of the Guard from a more intimate vantage point.