Day 21 - Thursday 16th August

Suzy had bought tickets online yesterday for the two us to go to Buckingham Palace this morning at 11:15. In summer, the palace state rooms are open to the public. Nicky and Amelia stayed at home for the morning.

We needed to pick up the tickets before the tour and they emphasised that you couldn't be late for the tour. So we allowed plenty of time to get there by leaving just before 10am - after Peppa Pig had finished on TV.

We caught the Northern Line train to Euston and then changed to the Victoria Line train and got off at Victoria. From there it was only 10 minutes walk to the palace area. There was a long queue to pick up tickets and an even longer queue to buy tickets.

I'd been expecting a tour guide with a small group of tourists. Instead there was a large crowd who were supplied with audio guides and headsets. Because of the large number of people, progress was sometimes slow.

I thought the tour would be interesting. It turned out to be amazing. This was one of the times when you run out of superlatives. In other words, it was so good that it's hard to do it justice but I'll give it a go.

It reminded me of when we went to Versailles near Paris more than 10 years ago. Versailles was impressive but it seemed empty in comparison with what we saw today. Perhaps this is because Buckingham Palace is a working palace where the royal family lives.

Another comparison might be the Vatican in Rome. This was big, ornate and historic. Maybe the Vatican wins. On a scale of 1 to 10, the Vatican is probably 12 and the Buckingham Palace State Rooms are probably only 11 out of 10.

At the start of the tour, you see the quadrangle and then the red-carpet staircase up to the next level. You go through a series of rooms with very tall ceilings, paintings, antique furniture, gold urns and glass chandeliers. Some rooms have a view over the gardens or the quadrangle.

One of the highlights of the tour is the exhibition of royal diamonds. This is where the tour crowds are the slowest because it is probably the biggest wow factor. It's like a mini version of visiting the crown jewels in the Tower of London.

The crown jewels are classified as priceless. I'm not sure if they put a value on these diamonds (or anything else in the State Rooms) but they would be worth heaps. They include crowns that the current Queen likes to wear regularly and jewellery that Queen Victoria used to wear.

One of the rules of the tour is that you are not allowed to take photos. This is understandable because you would want to take photos of every single item here. The average tour would take days if not months.

Another rule is that you must turn off your mobile phone. I actually turned mine to silent rather than turning it off altogether just in case Nicky rang to say that the baby was on the way. That call didn't happen.

They told us that the tour of the state rooms would take about 90 minutes after which we were free to follow the path around the palace gardens. As it turned out, we finished the indoors part in about an hour but you could easily have spent a lot more time there. There was so much to see.

After leaving the building, there was a souvenir shop at the beginning of the path around the palace gardens. It was one of the best souvenir shops that I've seen at any tourist shop. Apart from the normal key rings and tea towels, there were numerous items with Buckingham Palace logos that were really useful, clever, cute and impressive.

The garden itself was OK but nothing special. The gardens in Japan were better.

After leaving the palace, we walked back towards Victoria Station and found a nice cafe to have lunch.

When we got home at about 2:30pm, all was quiet and so we assumed that Amelia was still having her sleep after lunch. Once we got to our room, we heard her voice and assumed that she had just woken up. This turned out to be a bad assumption because soon after we went in to her room to get her out of bed, Nicky came downstairs to tell us that she'd only gone to bed about 30 minutes before and probably hadn't gone to sleep.

Nicky took her to Gymboree at about 3:30pm. Suzy and I went to the fish shop to get some salmon for dinner and then to the supermarket. When Nicky got home with Amelia at about 6pm, Amelia was asleep in the car.

Although Amelia was grumpy because of lack of sleep, we were able to distract her with recordings of Peppa Pig and with the Wheels on the Bus app on my iPad.

The barbecued salmon was very tasty for dinner.