The 'working' palace

We took advantage of the fantastic weather today and did some traditional sightseeing. Our agenda was the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. Even though all of us have been in London for at least 3 years, none of us had been inside either! One excuse we do have is that the State Rooms are only open during the summer months (July to September) when the Queen is away. (Note: an interesting fact I learnt on QI tonight is that they fly the Royal Standard (flag with the lions on it) on top of Buckingham Palace when the Queen is in residence, and the Union Jack when she is not.)

The back of Buckingham Palace

So, the first thing to note is that these visits are, in my opinion, very expensive. The visit inside Buckingham Palace costs 17GBP and the one inside Westminster Abbey costs 15GBP. Having said that, both are definitely worth seeing, and they do give you an audio guide when you enter.

Buckingham Palace was impressive - I think it must be one of the nicest palace interiors I have seen. We only got to see the State Rooms (about 21 rooms in total) and no photos were permitted (yes, one attendee was forcing an 'innocent' Chinese lady to delete the 15 photos she had already taken...) so unfortunately I have no pictures of the interior, but rest assured they are suitably grand. The rooms that stood out the most were the drawing rooms (Green, Blue and White). Each is a large room with high decorated ceilings, dressed with beautiful chandeliers, mirrors, porcelain, furniture and paintings, and elegantly co-ordinated in the relevant colour theme so that the impression you get is that the room is opulent, but not garish. We were all really amazed by the immense Picture Gallery (50 metres long) and the quality of the art collection (it contains works by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Rubens and Titian, amongst others). The Throne Room and the Ballroom are where a lot of formalities seem to take place. There are a matching set of his and her thrones in the Throne Room which are a bright pink colour (!) - apparently custom made when QE2 was coronated. The Ballroom is where they do all the investitures. I also personally liked the Music Room because of its simplicity - it contains a grand piano and not much else. The audio guide tells you some interesting facts, like that there is a secret passageway between the Queen's chambers and the White Drawing Room where she receives guests; and that one of the pieces of furniture (a Sevres porcelain table known as the Table of the Grand Commanders because it contains portraits of 12 great commanders from antiquity) was previously owned by Napolean.

More on Westminster Abbey tomorrow!

Stylish cupcakes

So, today we checked out a cool new place called Cox Cookies & Cakes (13 Brewer Street, W1F 0RH)  http://www.coxcookiesandcake.com/. It's located in the heart of Soho and suitably camp. Following the crazy trend in cupcakes and cupcake shops, it seems like this is now the purvey of fashion types (Patrick Cox = owner = shoe designer) who are stamping and selling cupcakes with their own distinct style. It's a tiny little place - I think there's like 6 seats - but makes its mark with its black interior, flourescent decoration, cute waiters in tight black T's (with ''BITE ME" written across the back) and arty cupcakes decorated with lips, skull and crossbones and pictures of Marilyn. The cupcakes themselves are not amazingly better than any others I've tasted, but the creativity in the packaging is fantastic. The place got a lot of traffic while we were inside. Goes to show that a bit of a twist can be all that is needed for a successful entree into an already tight market.