London - Part 4 - Buckingham Palace and Harrods (22nd - 25th April)

The main roadway to Buckingham Palace was closed for the London Marathon, so we needed to detour through St James Park.  Despite the number of people walking through the area, there was plenty of wildlife - squirrels, swans and ducks:

Squirrel in a tree (its in the fork between the right branch and lower branch

Squirrel!

After passing through the park we came to the Palace -

Outside Buckingham Palace - the metalwork is gates for the marathon

Buckingham Palace

The Gates

Beefeater Guard

Us at the Palace

Internal Palace Gates

By now we had been walking for about ten hours and had walked over 20km so we were getting tired, but we had one more stop, Harrods - a very famous and prestigious shop in London

Lego model of Harrods

Harrods

The main reason we came to Harrods was to see the "My first Harrods" pets.  Each of my children was given a My First Harrods plush toy - Alana had My First Harrods Cow, Cameron has My First Harrods Kitten ("kitty") and Tomas has My First Harrods Puppy ("Woofy").  It was almost surreal seeing a big stack of them:

Kitties and Woofies!

Mohamed Al-Fayed was the chairmen of Harrods until its sale to Qatar in 2010.  Mohamed was the father of Dodi Al-Fayed who was killed with Princess Diana.  There is a tribute to them on the bottom floor, showing Dodi and Diana dancing under the wings of an albatross, titled Innocent Victims:

Innocent Victims

There is also a wine glass from Diana's last meal and the engagement ring Dodi had purchased the day before their death:

Memorial

After leaving Harrods we caught to Tube back to Julian's house and collapsed.  It had been a long day and we were exhausted.  We got take-away Thai food and played board games until we were too tired to continue and headed to bed.