The Queen

ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL, LONDON, UK -- Today, I had the exciting chance to see the Queen of England, Elizabeth II at St. Paul's Cathedral. There was a national memorial service at the Cathedral in memory of the UK servicemen and women who have died in Iraq, for more information you can read the BBC article here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8295868.stm.

As I walk past the Cathedral every day on my way to and from LSE, when I saw the start of the ceremony on the news, I figured I would walk a different way. Then, all of a sudden I had some more time on my hands, so I intentionally decided to fight the crowd in the off chance that I might get to see the Queen. I was considering bringing my camera anyway, given that I was off to LSE to see the Prime Minister of Hungary, and this sealed the deal. So, I set off, and as soon as I crossed the Millennium Bridge it was clear that this was going to be crazy. There were thousands of people in the crowds lining the street, which was all closed off to traffic, and there were hundreds of policemen and soldiers there for security, with guys on the roof and sniffing dogs, the whole thing. I later found out that in addition to the Queen's security detail, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was also there, so the entire UK secret service was there too. I calculated my time and saw I had about 20 minutes to spare, so I found a nice spot and waited.

Now, almost all massive cathedrals around the world have sets of two or three-story doors that the general public uses every day to go in and out, but there is usually the one or two 20-story door(s) that is never opened. Well, for the Queen, turns out they do. All of a sudden, the redcoats come out the side doors, the massive center door opens, "G-d Save the Queen" plays over loudspeakers, and she came outside and waved to the crowd! She then walked down the steps and into her car, and was off as the crowds waved back.

For more pictures, click on this public link here (or if you are actually on Facebook, you can just see my album, but they're exactly the same): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2629213&id=8623973&l=be1918923e.

After that I went to the lecture by Gordon Rajnai, Prime Minister of Hungary, who gave a highly-technical talk about central European GDP rates and the recession and how Hungary has one of the lowest deficits in Europe (3.9% of GDP this year). Pictures from that are in the link above as well. The Prime Minister is in the blue tie (and most of the photos), the other man is Howard Davies, Chair of the LSE.

The only other item of note from this afternoon was that I made it back into HSBC, got my UK debit card, and successfully made a 100 pound deposit!

Tonight, I'm off on the Tube to Chelsea to go see a movie - here's hoping this rain stops and goes away already!