Anniversary

Today was the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. There were events all across England to commemorate one of the most famous battles for the British, and the death of Admiral Lord Nelson, the symbolic patriot for England. The morning started a little rough as both Michaele and Chris slept a little to late due to alarm clock malfunctions – but they were quick to get ready and head off. We tried our hardest to get to Trafalgar Square to make it in time for the parade, and we caught the very end of it. We were all starving and zombie eyed, so we made a quick dart for the closest Subway to recharge.

After walking around London for the majority of the day and shopping at Carniby street, we walked back to Trafalgar square to find a queue of about 10.000 people waiting to enter the square. Earlier on in the week I had looked online for upcoming London activities and found that there would be a 2 hour stage show and patriotic celebration to commemorate the anniversary – I requested 6 free tickets online, and they arrived in my post box about 4 days later. We entered the square and claimed our standing room territory a couple of rows back from the action. We had to wait around an hour for the sun to set and the square to become full with the 10.000 people.

The celebration show was really incredible. There were explosions, great music, a enactment of an army rescue operation where fake gunmen were on top of the national gallery gunning people down, as British army troops repelled down from the gallery’s 10 story stone façade. It was topped with a re telling of the story of the battle of Trafalgar via a large video screen shaped as a ships mast, and then a couple songs by the Queen’s regiment band. It was really incredible, and worth the 3 hours of standing, after that exhausting performance, we had to go to Pizza hut to refuel before going back home.