Everyone’s British at the Queen’s Boat Festival

We moved to London at an amazing year! The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, celebrating 60 years of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign, and the Olympics! The city was alive and I’m happy that we were able to take part in some of the festivities.

One of the most memorable was for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee River Pageant in June, marked with a “41-gun salute, 1,000 boats, 20,000 participants and a million onlookers” (Source: Guardian UK article).  

My husband and I live only about a 5 minute walk from the Tower Bridge on the south side of the river Thames. All the boats were passing through right underneath the bridge, so we were determined to see it.

The morning of the boat festival, we wandered out to the waterfront, which was barricaded by the UK police force, an intimidating bunch 🙂 – they told us that we needed to provide proof of residency in the neighborhood to be able to walk along that section of the waterfront. A short commute back to our flat and another 15 minutes later, we managed to get access. But then we ran into another problem: all the bars and restaurants seemed to have reserved seating and special events in place, and we hadn’t made any form of prior reservation to partake in those events.

We weren’t giving up, though. We started walking east, towards the Bermondsey neighborhood in London, where we managed to get to the Angel pub right around their opening time. And even better  – we ordered a pint of beer and secured a seat on their front outside porch overlooking the Thames river, with a direct view of Tower Bridge!!! We were incredibly excited and determined to stay in our spot until the boat festival started.  The problem was we had another 4 hours to wait before it passed by us.

In those 4 hours the pub became more and more crowded, the rain that was just light earlier in the day became heavier, and it became colder and windier! Luckily there was a roof covering the outside porch where we were jammed in with plenty of other people, all hoping to get a view of the Queen, or at least of the 1,000 different types of boats about to pass along the river at the same time. The pub became so crowded that it had to close its doors and decline any more customers, and even worse their kitchen was backed up. Which meant we couldn’t eat. So 4 bags of chips (or “crisps” as they call it here) later, we gave up on trying to eat and just continued drinking pints with the new friends we met next to us.

Eventually we saw the boats come down the river.

And I have to admit, I got chills. It was exciting. The weather was awful!! But it didn’t seem to matter. Everybody was waving flags and singing, crowds were lined up along the river, and for the next hour or so we shouted and cheered as all different types of old historical and new boats came down the river.

For the first time, I don’t think anyone said to us in a passive aggressive way, “So, are you enjoying the boat festival? Hmm…is that an American accent? Are you from America?”

In the pub that day we were all one. Maybe the alcohol had something to do with that feeling. But I’m going to pretend that had absolutely nothing to do with it.

I believe it was a special and memorable day where everyone came together and felt thankful for the moment –  standing along the river with a view of the Tower Bridge,  the Queen and the royal party traveling by with 1,000 other boats, and a million people all watching and celebrating it together along the banks of the Thames!

June 2012