Nic and Sue’s Euro River Cruise and l bits on the side. Autumn 2026. Day 17 – Plan C. London.

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A busy one today.

Out this morning to visit the King! Well a walking tour “The Changing of the Horse Guard and Buckingham Palace”
We grabbed a ‘Jump’ Black Cab with Bradley to the meeting point at Green Park, near the Ritz Hotel in a fancy area, with plenty of time to spare.

We had a wander up and down Piccadilly street with some classy names – The Ritz and Wormsley Hotels, Fortnum and Mason, Ferrari, Lotus, Cartier and others.

We found the exact meeting place for the tour, I left Sue on a seat and went for a walk through Green Park and across to Buckingham Palace where there was a heap of noise happening.

Turned out a runner was finishing a run at Buck Palace just then. Her story – at 18, endurance athlete Esmée Gummer was left paralyzed from the waist down following surgery complications. Now 35, she has undertaken an extraordinary 5,000km (3,107-mile) run across all 76 cities in the UK and Ireland over 99 days to inspire one million people to get moving.
This morning she finished the 99 days of running at Buckingham Palace, so a bit of excitement and I got some photos.

I also managed some shots around the front of Buck Palace and the Guards before all the crowds come along.

I walked back to meet the tour.
John our guide was fabulous. So many interesting stories. He is a secondary history teacher during the week and leads tours on weekends. So off we went

Green park is one of the 5 Royal Parks. A bit dry at the moment but some green.
According to London myth, Queen Catherine caught her husband, King Charles II, picking flowers in the park for one of his mistresses. Furious about the infidelity, she reportedly demanded that every single flower be ripped out.
She also banned any new flowers from ever being planted there again, which is why the central London space traditionally features only trees and lawns.

Fun fact: Union Flag is only called Union Jack when at sea.

Lancaster House, nearby to Buck Palace is a small copy of the Palace and is used to film a lot of the Royal ‘shows’ Bridgerton, The Queen, Downton Abbey, Charlotte etc.

The Queen Victoria statue in the centre of the fountain has has a nose job, with a nose that is 40 years younger than the rest of the statue. When doing some renovations, a tradesman dropped a hammer and broke the nose. Any repairs to Grade 1 statues requires the use of original stone, so they quarried some stone from the original location, crafted a nose and stuck it on, so it’s a slightly different colour.

Clarence House – King Charles home. Next door St James house – 200 years older than Buck Palace. So much history here and I couldn’t recall all of John’s amazing stories of Royal residents who’ve lived here. When it was built by Henry VIII in the 1530’s it was surrounded by deer park and garden and used as a hunting lodge.
Charles 1 lived there, he was tried for treason and his execution ordered by Oliver Cromwell who became the self proclaimed Lord Protector earning £11mill pounds he also lived here. Princess Anne lives there now.

Charles the II started the guards tradition that has been in place for 500 years. Only once have they cancelled Changing of the Guard and that was this year during the heatwave.

St James park – 2nd Royal Park.
It is the smallest and Oldest park in London and used to have a hospital nearby- that housed plague patients. When they realised having dead bodies laying around was assisting the spread they then buried bodies in St James park to prevent spread – this was done in secret.

King James I created a Royal Menagerie that roamed in St James’s Park – a gathering of animals – dangerous ones in the middle of London which were later moved to London Zoo.

No one had any idea of the burials in the 1400’s and it was not until the 1980’s when digging the tunnels for the underground they found skeletons. So they diverted the underground to run under Green park. Here they discovered more skeletons from the bubonic plague in the 1600’s. Evidently according to John, when riding the underground under this area you can feel the trains wobble around as the tunnels were diverted around the skeleton burial areas.!!!

We had a short look at the 11am inspection of the horse guards.

Continuing on we saw the Pink pelicans a gift from Russia in the Lake in St James’s Park, they have bred for the first time in hundreds of years. No colour in the young ones yet. ( but there is a slight blush of pink in the white one)

Past Westminster Abbey 1000 years old. (Evensong Service- free) 3200+ people buried inside, including Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Oliver Cromwell (who overthrew the monarchy) was buried here temporarily and was removed when Charles II realised he was buried beside his ancestors. His body was dragged by horses through the city. He was accused of Treason, hung drawn and quartered. His head was placed on a 30 m spike on Westminster Hall?? for at least 20 years till the wind blew it down and it was then kept as a relic in private collections for 300 years before being buried in 1960.

The Palace of Westminster and Houses of Parliament have the Elizabeth Clock at one end of Parliament buildings, housing Big Ben, the bell, at the other end is Victoria Tower.
Parliament Square has several statues of famous people who have contributed to the world – Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, the only woman is the leader of the Suffragettes Millicent Fawcett.

Then onto Whitehall.

Women memorial celebrates Women in war and depicts the various uniforms they wore in the work they carried out in the absence of the men.
Minister of Defence or Ministry of Magic for HP fans. 18 floors underground of all the military secrets.

Then we were shuffled past the Horse guards on Whitehall Street, into a small square and behind a white line as John promised we would have the best view of the Horse Guard Sentry Changing. He was right.

John then explained a bit more about Charles I execution (signed off by Cromwell.) He stepped onto a scaffold outside two windows, wearing two shirts so he wouldn’t shiver with cold and be mistaken for shaking in fear, his last words to the gathered crowd – “Remember.” 1669. His head was chopped off with an axe. The clock opposite had a black mark at two O’clock and marks the time of his execution to remind royals to behave.

The tour ended here.

Lunch today was arranged by some friends that Sue met on a tour some years ago – Jan and Claire. We met at Brothers Marcus, Victoria after our tour. It was a lovely middle eastern brunch and they were good company and had some tips for our afternoon.
It was nice to sit over a meal.

Unfortunately we were in deep conversations and no photos were taken. They were keen not to interrupt our sightseeing for too long and they needed to get back to Kent, as they were off on a holiday to York tomorrow. So it was a bit rushed at the end of the lunch.
From lunch we headed back to Buck Palace for the 2:45 Changing of the guard, Captains inspection and band. This was a tip from John this morning and we were passing back this way anyway. So we grabbed a spot on the fence and hoped for the best.
And we snagged the best spot!!! The band arrived by bus and the group of guards entered from the left and had their inspection right in front of us. The band was just off to our right. They played Fireworks and Star Wars amongst a few others. It was an awesome experience and we’d fluked a spot to the left of gates where the guardsman changed over.

Then we walked back down Piccadilly to the Piccadilly Circus and on to Leicester Square where we secured some discounted tickets to Devil Wears Prada for tonight.

Cuppa and cake at Caffé Concerto. We sat and chatted to Hana, a lovely young podiatrist, from Bosnia, she was interested in Australia and what we had been doing here. She shared about her life here and was very proud of her country and showed us photos etc. she was waiting for her friend who was a manager here and she kindly paid our bill, which was embarrassing.
Then we meandered down to Oxford street for a look as we moved towards the theatre. It was totally mad busy – people everywhere, spilling out of pubs and standing along the street behind barricades drinking their beers etc. it was wall to wall people. Walked through SOHO square and down to Tottenham Court Rd to the Dominion Theatre.

We grabbed some hand cut fries at Five Guys so we could sit and kill some time before the show – it was also mad busy. Fries were good. Nice to sit for a bit.

Then it was off to the theatre for our West End Show -The Devil Wears Prada, music by Elton John. We both really enjoyed the show. The theatre was warm and views were good. (We had n row tickets).

Grabbed a Bolt home after a long day, that was filled with lots of sights, sounds, history, friends, learning and a fun show to top it off.