I can't help myself

An update on yesterday's post - there are multiple royal baby twitter feeds you can follow.  Daniel's been keeping up with The Royal Foetus.  He thinks the British spelling lends an air of authority.

Anyway... the whole thing reminded me that I never finished posting the last of the pictures from our trip to London - specifically the ones from the queen's birthday parade.  You were invited to that, right?  No?  She must have made a typo in your e-mail address on the E-vite.

Although you do hear people complain about their tax dollars going to subsidize Kate Middleton's fabulous hair and Prince Harry's all-night foam parties, for the most part they seem to get into the whole Royal Family thing...

Lego Royal Family

 We went back and forth about going, but the birthday parade was actually pretty cool.  There was much marching around and playing of brass instruments and pomp and circumstance and that sort of thing.

Giant Irish wolfhound

Bagpipers

Our camera battery was dying, but I really wish we'd gotten more pictures of these guys.  It was a marching band playing while riding Clydesdales (? - I know nothing about horses).  It's hard to tell, but this is a picture of a guy playing two huge kettle/tenor drums mounted on horseback.  Behind (in front? I can't remember) was an entire mounted marching band.  Sousaphones.  Everything.  It was impressive.

And then the important part... our brush with royalty.  Kate and Pippa(?):

And the queen and Prince Philip:

Yeah, you have to take my word for it, but it was them, I swear.

For completeness, here's a few other pictures we took during our last days in London when we ventured up to Baker St.

Daniel at the Sherlock Holmes Museum:

Subway tiles at the Baker St. tube entrance that I evidently thought was worth wasting precious camera battery on.