The Queen's Dresses

While I have seen the changing of the guards more times than I care to remember outside of Buckingham Palace while my parents were living here, I had never been inside the Palace. But yesterday, Nicole and I toured the State Apartments, because Nicole had seen online that there was a limited time exhibit of the Queen's Dresses. She couldn't get any tickets online, but we took a chance and went anyway, and managed to get ourselves tickets for an hour later. The State Apartments were very lavish, and we learned a lot about them through our free audio tour. One thing I hadn't realized was that Her Majesty is actually Queen of I think it's 11 different countries! It was all very interesting. And the display of her dresses was fascinating as well, 80 different dresses some from as far back as the 1940s. There was one that Nicole and I decided was a very 70s, child of Aquarius dress, because of its design and colors, and sure enough the placard stated she'd worn it in 1978. There was a lot of bling, in the form of diamante, sequins, pearls, and beads. Quite often her coutourier, or dress-maker/designer, tried to incorporate something of the countries she was visiting into her dresses. Thus she had California poppies all over the top of a dress for a visit to California, an Asian-influenced style for a visit to Thailand, etc. Very thoughtful, eh? We had a nice long walk through the south gardens on our way out of the castle, much of which was very brown from the drought...I guess the Queen is no exception for the hose pipe ban.

We then met up with Rob, who'd been off taking engagement photos of a couple in Richmond, and wandered around Westminster doing the touristy thing for a bit. He's one of those people who just seems to know something about everything...I brought up the conversation with my dad, because Nicole wanted to know what my parents thought of me looking for a new job in England, and the whole power thing came up again. Apparently, England is in a similar position, having ignored their own power needs for some time, and are now on the verge of having I think he said 30 reactors built in France, to then be used to supply power in the UK. Usually you flippantly remark about it being a small world in terms of knowing the same people, but in this case, maybe it's a small world with similar problems, at least for so-called first world countries.