A Visit to the Queen's House

Recently Aaron and I toured the Queen's home: Buckingham Palace. Unfortunately, no, she wasn't home at the time...

...But for only a few months once a year, Buckingham Palace opens its doors to visitors while the Queen is not there. The rooms and areas that are available to see include:

• The Queen's Gallery - we found this to be the least exciting part. It is artwork from the Royal Collection. The featured exhibition right now is the palace garden.
• The Royal Mews - this part has working stables and houses everything to do with transportation for the Queen and other members of the royal family (such as coaches, carriages, and Bentleys). It even houses the Rolls-Royce Phantom IV. Fun facts: the cars do not have registration numbers since they are state vehicles. They also have special engines that allow them to drive at a very slow speed for a long time (used during the processions).
• The State Rooms - This was the best part! We toured through 19 rooms that are used for ceremonial occasions and entertaining. They are called the state rooms because they are public rooms (used for state entertaining). You couldn't take pictures in any of the rooms, so unfortunately I have no photos but they were all elegant, pristine, and very "royal". The Queen has her own seamstress/designer and we saw some of her outfits, hats and jewellery that she's worn to important functions. We also saw some gifts given from other Heads of State who have visited the palace. My favorite state room was the ballroom which is where all the banquets take place. The room is huge, and it was set up as if the state banquet was taking place (with beautiful china, table decorations, etc). There are at least five glasses used during a banquet dinner: one for water, red wine, white wine, champagne, sherry. That's a lot of drinking!

To give you some background, Buckingham Palace was originally a house built in 1701 for the Duke of Buckingham. It was then bought by King George III in 1761 for his wife Queen Charlotte to use as a home. Eventually King George IV and later King William IV built it into a palace. Finally when Queen Victoria came to power, she turned it into her primary residence and expanded it further.

The palace is massive and we only toured through a small part of it. It has 775 rooms (including 19 state rooms, 52 royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, 92 offices, 78 bathrooms and one indoor pool).

We would definitely recommend touring the palace if it is open. Seeing it from the outside is neat, but being in rooms where so many monarchs have walked before is incredible.