Day 2 of Openhouse London weekend dawned not so bright but it wasn’t raining so I was grateful for that considering we probably had to spend about 30 minutes waiting in a line in the open outside Horseguards Parade. It was another 20 minutes before we got into the tour proper. I wasn’t too upset though as people behind us certainly had a lot longer to wait exponentially than we did. In fact a fight nearly broke out when the people in front of us, a bigger tour group of sorts, let in three of their latecoming members into the line after the person in charge of the queue had already done a head count. Pat and I were about four or five from the end so we were okay but the people behind us would have been pushed into the next group of tours which was a half hour after we could enter so they made sure to voice their opinion. The guy in charge of the queue was actually really good about ensure the three latecomers went to the end of the line but it did get very heated for a long while before it was resolved.

You probably know Horse Guards Parade best for the area just down the road from Number 10 (in fact from the parade you can actually see in to what is the back of number 10 except for all the big bushes and barbed wire fence in your way) where there are troopers from the Household Calvary mounted and on foot. It’s the horses which are the main attraction normally though the troopers on foot also get their fare share of attention for their interesting uniforms. You’ll know the area as there are millions of tourists normally milling around trying to get photos of and with the horses and guards.

Small trivia which may surprise but in 2012 it will actually host the beach volleyball competition during the Olympics.

The only time, I think, you can get a guided tour of the buildings at Horse Guards Parade is on openhouse weekend so they are normally quite a popular choice and its first come first serve so its best to get to the parade relatively early as tours are only every 20 minutes and limited numbers per tour. You are taken though the various rooms, shown a video, get to handle a beefeater hat (which are made of Canadian black bear fur ;( Actually £1m was contributed by Madonna, Stella McCartney and crew to try and make an alternative synthetic cap but this never went through as they were no good!)

We went into the Major General’s room (painted a slight green which is supposedly the most soothing to the eye.) In this room the light is never switched off. There are three stories: 1. something about leaving the light on for one of the soldiers who was out at a party and then got lost in the trees coming home and fell asleep at the bottom of one and he used the light to guide him home 2. something about the Duke burning the midnight oil and 3. something about it being left on for returning soldiers. I kind of like the thought of option number 3 but also the green side of me thinks it would be better for the environment if it was switched off!

Just at the exit/entry of the tour on the roof of an arch is painted a black and white symbol. This marked where the parish boundary of St Margaret’s, Westminster and St Martin-in-the-Fields passes from East to West exactly through the centre of the building apparently separating the posh from then not so posh …

After Horseguards Parade we headed towards City Hall. Along the way we saw the giant chess pieces in Trafalgar square but couldn’t be bothered getting too close so utilised my 12x zoom to get some pictures:

Here are some other random shots we saw along the journey (its quite a walk!)

I love city hall. Its one of the most interesting looking buildings in London and sitting across from the Tower of London it certainly makes quite a contrast. Open House allowed you go to into the building and up to the look out points though we had a lot of fun with photos from inside the building too. I’m not sure if they allow access to the public during normal business hours. Thankfully we didn’t have much of a wait. In previous years I’ve seen very long lines indeed to get into the building.

Finally, we finished off our day of viewing London buildings with a tour of Royal Albert Hall. It’s a pretty cool tour. I think they are also available normally but at just under a tenner or something. I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t know if our tour was the same one you’d get normally but I was happy with where we were taken.

Some fun facts we learnt about Royal Albert Hall:
– There are apparently more than 2,000 letter “A’s” scattered throughout;
– Rent per annum on the seats was 1 shilling on a 999 year lease
– 1,300 of 5,222 seats £100 per seat for 999 year leases
– There are 9,999 pipes in the organ in the Royal Albert Hall itself (9 miles, 42 feet with the smallest the size of a little finger)

Our first stop was the Queen’s suite and the Royal Retiring Room. It was nice but actually it wasn’t as spectactular as I imagined it to be. We were then taken to the actual performance area ourselves to gaze at the roof and the organs and watch them setting up for the next performance. We were then taken into the bowels of Royal Albert Hall. It is nearly as deep as it is tall which allows them to basically set up the performance area downstairs and then literally lift the floor up. The coolest thing is that they are planning to use the loading bay areas for funky launch parties which would be very different.

Oh yea – the queen has her own box but there are certain rules which should never be broken:
1. You must dress smartly – men must wear ties
2. There is no drinking in your seat and
3. There is to be no dancing in the box.

Can you believe it? Nelson Mandela was the first, and only, to break the rules! He came into the box without a tie and he danced!

I had a fantastic Openhouse weekend and I love learning more about London every day.

We hit three buildings during today’s Openhouse events: Channel 4 at Victoria, BFI Imax Theatre and the OXO Tower.

Of the three Channel 4 was the most disappointing. We were expecting to get a walk through some of the more interesting aspects of the building but instead the visit was limited to the glass walkway on the third or was it fourth floor. It was aesthetically pleasing but in terms of an insider visit hardly openhouse. Here are the photos:

An interesting fact: to help reduce the need for air-ducting chilled water is used to make the air-conditioning more compact and the external glass cladding has bands of sun-screen mesh.

It took us about ten minutes to do the whole thing and that was with us trying our best to make the most of the visit! As a result of this rather brief visit we ended up walking around Victoria and Westminster for a bit before our next building: BFI Imax.

Our walk included a short visit through the Treasury which was a literal walk through the building and courtyard:

To get tickets to BFI Imax you had to email them and book on to the tour in the weeks leading up to it. I expected it to be quite a popular tour but only four other people ended up at our booking. We weren’t sure what to expect but it turns out that basically the visit entailed you going up into the projector room during a screening. Admittedly this was quite cool and you get to do what not many other people have a chance to but we did expect more of a guided tour than just being brought up there and then leaving it up to us to ask questions of the projector guy.

The actual film being projected is massive. I can’t remember how long an actual film is but I remember thinking at the time it was mega long. The secret behind 3D screenings is that it is actually two reels of film projected simultaneously through a twin lens system. But I guess you know that huh?

The highlight of Openhouse Day 1 was our visit to the top of the Oxo Tower! It was actually hard work getting a spot on one of the guided tours up to the top of the tower and required knowing about the building in advance. Tours were on a first come first serve basis however bookings for the tour started an hour before the first tour. We got there about an hour early and already there was a rather long line.

They turned many people away but they did start taking names with the potential for offering the tours after Openhouse weekend had finished. For those who missed out on climbing the tower itself you can still go up to the (free) public viewing gallery on 8th floor at the bottom of the tower. This is also where the Harvey Nichols’ Oxo Tower Restaurant, Bar and Brasserie is located.

As the climb to the top of the Oxo Tower involves climbing up some rather dubious stairs you are asked to wear a construction hat to protect the noggin. Very attractive.

Here is our climb marked by the letters of the tower:

I love this photo of St Paul’s through the small windows:

And then we were at the top!

A certain someone promised me that they would control themselves this year at Royal Ascot and that they wouldn’t get into any trouble. The first message I received this morning as I was getting ready was that they’d lost their underwear. Hmmm … an auspicious start. But continuing on. I had such a fun time on Ladies’ Day at Royal Ascot last year that I couldn’t say no to going again this year.

We decided that we would repeat what we did last year and enter the Silver enclosure with our picnic food and this time also some drink. Not only did that save a lot of money but it also meant the drink was right there and we didn’t have to go hobbling all over the racecourse to line up in long giant queues to get any. 🙂 We decided Silver Ring too because finding the right dress would have been too much hard work (plus I haven’t found a dress yet that suitably covers my cleavage …) I thought that finding a reasonably priced hat or “substantial fascinator” would be a problem as well but it turns out I had to go with a hat anyway as I couldn’t find a fascinator to match the colour of my dress. For some reasons fascinators, in Accessorize anyway, were coloured cream, black, hot pink or blue this year!

Speaking of dresses – due to how busy I’ve been in the last two months I only had one afternoon after work to find a dress for today’s event. Talk about poor planning! However, its not like I meant to leave it to the last minute – I’d done some browsing previously but was really disappointed in what was around and I just couldn’t find anything I liked. I was pretty desperate really to find something but thankfully I found a dress in Debenham’s. Ironically the dress at £35 was nearly the same price as my hat ensemble!

Lots of people opt for driving or being driven to Royal Ascot which I can’t really understand because the train is just so convenient. There’s no traffic, it comes fairly regularly (every 15 minutes) and if you time it right you can generally get a seat. I heard some horror stories of people being stuck in traffic for hours thereby missing most of the day!

We ran into James and D who it seemed had the same plans as us so it was like our anniversary event! Clearly they enjoyed themselves last year too and had been planning to attend Royal Ascot for a while. We all arrived fairly early on the day and like last year were able to snatch up a table which was so much more comfortable than being on the ground. Especially for us girls in dresses.

The second time round we felt like regulars at the racecourse knowing where to stand (basically on top of your chairs!) to get good views of the racecourse (as a result I had slightly better luck of getting a decent snap of the Queen), we placed bets with the bookies. One called Kenny was our favourite for a while – I could barely understand what he said half the time but he cracked Pauline and I up. But when our luck dried up with him we moved on to another bookie and so on. Overall I think I was down for the day but I did have a few big wins.

The only disappointing aspect of today was the lavs. Last year they were amazing – women never had to wait, the buildings themselves were huge so plenty of space to touch up your hair, dress, make-up etc. by the mirrors and were generally quite hygienic. This time around for some reason they’d opted for basically small demountables with about six loos in each. Not only were they small but in our area the men’s demountables (four) outnumbered the women’s (two)! Really bad planning. Plus by about halfway through the day the loos started to flood.

But other than that the day ran pretty smoothly, no one got too drunk (heh heh) and we all retired to Belgo’s in Covent Garden for a satisfactory half chicken dinner and …beer.