As part of the trip down to London, I had visited the Buckingham Palace which is the official London residence of the British monarch. Buckingham palace is located at the city of Westminster as shown in the map below.


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I was walking with my mate from St. James park towards the direction of the palace. It is a really good place of serenity with a very nice garden. Trees were full with leaves turned brown as it was almost the end of autumn season. Together with the green floor of grasses, the colors were just awesome! The park was quiet and it is definitely a good place to relax and get away from the noisy downtown.









First view of Buckingham palace.



"Originally it was known as Buckingham House, the building which forms the core of today's palace was a large townhouse built for the Duke of Buckingham in 1703 on a site which had been in private ownership for at least 150 years. It was subsequently acquired by George III in 1761[2] as a private residence for Queen Charlotte, and known as "The Queen's House". During the 19th century it was enlarged, principally by architects John Nash and Edward Blore, forming three wings around a central courtyard. Buckingham Palace finally became the official royal palace of the British monarch on the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837."[Wikipedia]



I was doing some testing with my new camera, turning on the "nostalgic" shooting mode which gives the picture a more "nostalgic" feel. A different kind of feel, more like a old picture isn't it given the rich in brown color.








A picture of the royal guard taken at St. James Castle rather than Buckingham palace as it was too crowded there. I had no chance at all to just even get close enough to the gate for a zoom snap of the real royal guards. But anyway, they all look the same isn't it? Who cares :)





Just give you a rough idea how crowded it was during a weekend. The outer wall of the building was constantly surrounded by bunch of tourists who wanted to take a look at the Changing of the Guard, a major ceremony and tourist attraction. Don't ever dream of to squeeze yourself into the crowd to get close enough to the gate. You will probably ended up being push down to the floor as some of them really went so violent to secure themselves a place to have the best view of the ceremony.





We did not stay long there as it was just too crowded. I was thinking to myself that I did not even bother to visit my country's royal palace, why should I be so fancy about others palace? The building itself was a really grand one with brilliant carvings on it's exterior wall. But I bet you would not want to stay any longer given that there was such a big crowd and that makes it not a place where you can really sit down to relax and enjoy :).