Today we did two exciting things - We went to the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and we went to a Star Wars Exhibit! The Changing of the Guard Ceremony takes place almost every day, and basically it is when the Queen's guards have a shift change. However, it is quite a ceremony. The new guards parade down the street accompanied by a marching brass band. Above is a picture of Buckingham Palace (notice it was sunny today!). You might notice that there were lots of people; Ethan sat on dad's shoulders to get a better view.

If you look carefully inside the gate, you will see the Guard lined up ready to leave the Palace.

Here's the band . . . They played several tunes, but the most surprising was the Star Wars overture which we all thought was funny for the Queen's Guards to be playing and funny because we were on our way to the Star Wars exhibit at the Westminster County Hall.


After watching the ceremony, we walked through St. James Park to get on the Tube (subway) to go to the Star Wars Exhibit. St. James park has a pond with a ducks, geese, tons of pigeons, some orange-beaked black chicken-looking birds, and, strangely, white pelicans. When we first saw the pelicans, one of them was twisting his neck to the side and trying to eat some grass - it was really funny. Here is a picture of the pelicans.





The next picture is the view from a bridge crossing the pond over St.James Park looking towards "Duck Island." Notice the London Eye in the background.

After going to Buckingham Palace, we headed towards the Star Wars Exhibit which was put on by LucasFilms and had many of the original costumes and props from the real filming of the movies. We all enjoyed viewing some of the original concept sketches for the characters. Below is a picture of Anakin's fighter jet - notice R2D2 in the back.



Here is a picture of me and Ethan with R2D2.


Perhaps the most exciting part of the exhibit was Jedi School. We all got to attend Jedi School where you train to become a Jedi, but Ethan was randomly picked as one of the six kids who got to receive some actual light saber training!! Below the kids have just received their light sabers and are getting ready to practice some moves with their teachers.

The Jedis have learned their moves and now each one of them has to individually face Darth Vader to graduate (notice the Storm Trooper in the background). All of the Jedi's defeated the dark side!


Here is Ethan with his Jedi teacher after class.

All in all, saved the galaxy and had a spot of Indian take-away to top it off . . . a good day.