Day Four: Buckingham, Picadilly, China Town, and a Weird Incident at the Park

This morning we went to Buckingham to watch the changing of the guards. It is not all it's cracked up to be. People just keep on walking back and forth carrying various objects like swords or rifles or flags or some other oddly shaped things. One looked a great deal like a flute, or at least it did from a distance. Occasionally they play nice music. After Buckingham I went to the Queen's gallery to see the art there. Some of the pieces there were really nice. They are having a special exhibit of seventeenth century Dutch painting right now, and the audio guide pointed out stuff that I never would have noticed otherwise. I particularly liked the illusionist style of Dou and symbolism of the Steen piece there. Apart from the Dutch paintings, the clocks and china were really neat as well. It's amazing how much clocks kept track of back then....zodiac sign, day of month, month, barometric pressure even. And they had to be wound. It's kind of odd to think that had I lived a hundred years ago, my watch would have needed daily winding.
After Buckingham, I headed for Picadilly and looked around over there. The shops are just like shops in the US...big huge chain stores and nothing special. On the way to China town I wandered by some fresh fruit stalls in a market and picked up som lychees, which are good but have unfortunately big seeds. China town was smaller than I expected, but I got an egg tart so that I could say I had an egg tart in London.=)
After dinner today, Linh and I decided to talk a walk in the park and got locked in. It was rather odd. The gate was closed when we were trying to leave, and eventually the firemen had to evacuate people over ladders. They said it had never happened before. I guess if we aren't going to get lost, we have to do something else.