Trends

Debates, discussions, news articles, cultural differences stories and everyday life blah blah.

On The Road

Follow me in China, in Central and in South America, in Australia, in South-East Asia or in Europe. Enjoy the pictures and some crazy travel stories!

Immigration

How to immigrate to Canada, how to apply for Canadian citizenship, and how to tackle the challenges newcomers face.

Just Blogging

Blog contests, memes, interviews, photography hunts, random facts… Let’s connect, share some blogging fun and some little snippets of life.

The Saturday Series

The ten post Saturday series: how to immigrate to Canada, how to find a job, interviews with immigrants… and more!

Home » French Summer, Snapshots

Buckingham Palace

Written by on July 13, 2010 – 10:00 am11 Comments | 13 Read this

Com­ing from a coun­try which exe­cuted Louis XVI, the last king, by guil­lo­tine, I tend to con­sider monar­chy a cus­tom some­what obso­lete and old-fashioned although harm­less if a Par­lia­ment is in place. We don’t hear that much about the Queen in Canada and I’ve never been very inter­ested in gos­sip about the Royal Family.

I still wanted to see Buck­ing­ham Palace though, as well as the whole area around it. Indeed, once you step on Con­sti­tu­tion Hill, you feel like you enter another world. A high wall and barb­wire pro­tect the bound­aries of the Palace and CCTV cam­eras seem to be every­where. Traf­fic lights have pedes­trian and horse cross­ing lights. Cars are shiny and hordes of tourists are ready to press the shut­ter but­ton as soon as they see a shadow mov­ing inside the Palace.

Of course, you can’t enter Buck­ing­ham Palace. Besides, the Queen was in Ottawa when we were in Lon­don — what a shame. Yet, peo­ple get as close to the get as they can and take pic­tures of the guards instead.

You can fol­low our trip to the U.K here on Flickr: United King­dom.

Ah, No Trespassing

Traf­fic Lights for Horses

Gate of Buck­ing­ham Palace

Front of Buck­ing­ham Palace

Buck­ing­ham Palace and the Guards

Admi­ralty Arch

Buck­ing­ham Palace Gates’ Lock

Buck­ing­ham Palace Gates’ Lock

Buck­ing­ham Palace Gates

Try­ing to Take Pictures…

Buck­ing­ham Palace’ Fountain

Gate to the Mall Walk

Buck­ing­ham Palace

Towards the Mall Walk

Related arti­cles:

  1. Gar­dens of Versailles
  2. The Sum­mer Palace (颐和园)
  3. The For­bid­den City (故宫)
  4. Old Bei­jing (老北京)
  5. The Lon­don Eye

Tagged with:

11 Comments »

  • Yogi says:

    When I was there years ago when the IRA was still set­ting bombs their were guards out there where the tourists were. It was a lit­tle unset­tling because if you looked at them they would look you right in the eye and glare.

Leave a comment!

Add your comment below, or trackback from your own site. You can also subscribe to these comments via RSS.

All comments are welcomed!

You can use these tags:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

This is a Gravatar-enabled weblog. To get yours, head to Gravatar.