London and The Royal Wedding

So yesterday was the Royal Wedding as you all know, and while many people decided to take the extra bank holiday to go travelling, my travelling was a bit closer to home this time - to the centre of London!

The day started by hopping on the tube, and as soon as I got on I could feel electricity in the air. People starting piling on wearing crowns, Union Jack wigs and wacky costumes, and as I got out at Hyde Park station the atmosphere was positively buzzing. As I walked towards the 3 giant screens showing live coverage of the wedding, I was handed a free William and Kate flag and proceeded set up my picnic blanket alongside 120,000 others. We all watched as Prince William appeared first in his military red uniform and a big roar rose up from the crowd as 120,000 flags were waved ceremoniously in the air. Then there was the gasp as we all spotted Kate's dress for the first time and the cheers and flag waving happened all over again.

I looked around me and saw a strange mix of people all here to celebrate, those with wedding dresses on, those that had come dressed for a wedding, the hundreds of other Wills' and Kates' or those strange few that had come in any old fancy dress, even if it was a bright purple spandex super hero suit or a multi coloured jester outfit. Bands were playing and Pimms was being handed out, it felt more like a festival than a wedding. I looked down at my jeans and royal blue top and wondered if I could have made a bit more of an effort.


Suddenly, I realised that  I had reached the height of Royal Wedding fever, I wanted to be in the action, I wanted to actually see William and Kate for real. I was only a short walk away from Buckingham Palace, and was sure I would be able to make it in time for the all-important kiss on the balcony scene. I skipped the procession on the big screen and started at a fast pace towards the Palace. As soon as  I got within a mile of the Palace though I knew I had made a big mistake, I couldn't even see the road for the thousands and thousands of people standing in front of me. I felt myself being crushed in all sides, a huge backpack pushing me from behind into a bicycle in front. Somehow I had managed to get one side of a small fence and I was stuck. Policemen were shouting and us and wouldn't let us past even though there seemed to be lots of space and people walking on the other side. A surge began and people started to push and shout and I felt like I couldn't breathe, I longed to be back in the park and watching the big screen again.

Finally, somehow (I'll never really know exactly),  I managed to get back to the park just in time to see Kate and William appear on the balcony on the big screen. A World War II bomber plane flew past the balcony on t.v. and then in appeared right in the sky above us. We all waved and cheered at the plane and as Kate and William leaned in for the royal kiss, the crowd went crazy and not one single inch of the sky was to be seen as 120,000 arms, flags, cork bottle tops and who knows what else was thrown up into the air.  Now, I usually don't get caught up in things like this and I am not patriotic at all - in fact most of the time I wouldn't even consider myself to be British, but just at that moment with everyone cheering as hard as they could and all waving their flags I felt proud to be British and wouldn't have wanted to travel anywhere else in the world at that moment - England was perfect.