Post written by Katherine, a United Planet Team member

The Queen has two birthdays. The present Queen was born on April 21, 1926. She celebrates this day privately, but then every Monarch’s ‘official’ birthday is on the second Saturday in June (because the weather is generally nice then for all the parades!). Throughout June there are big celebrations, the best known ones are the Trooping of the Colour and the 42 gun salute. The Trooping of the Colour is when thousands of the Queen’s Guards (the men in red coats and funny, furry hats) troop down an avenue in front of Buckingham Palace and then on through London. It is lots of fun to watch if you are ever in England for it.

“Trooping of the Colour” by Dano on Flickr

The best birthday (I think) the Queen has ever had was her 80th birthday celebration in 2006. There were amazing parades and celebrations for the whole year, which was really fun. I got to see a huge parade at the beginning of June that was full of horses, gun carriages, cannons and thousands of guard men in crazy outfits! The Queen and Prince Philip also came by in a gold carriage and we all called out, “Happy Birthday your majesty,” as she went past. Then, on the second Saturday in June, there was a huge televised celebration from Buckingham Palace which started with Brian May (the famous guitarist from the band Queen) playing “God Save the Queen” on his electric guitar on the palace roof! Everyone found it hilarious.

See a clip of the performance here

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Europe, Festival, Foreign Culture, local culture, Local festival, Team Stories, travel, traveling, United Planet, video. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.