Ira Lacher reports from London in advance of the coronation of King Charles III.
With just days before the coronation of King Charles III, perhaps the enthusiasm in London for the royal shindig has increased over what it seemed when my wife and I, along with our son and daughter-in-law, visited London early in April: a combination of normal, hassled, and indifferent.
The weather was normal: cool, breezy with occasional rain every day. Prices, escalating since the Brexit-resulting falloff of the pound ($1.20 USD), were normal, which was to say high. Crowds, especially in the shopping destinations of Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, Soho, and in the West End theater district, were normal, which was to say mobbed, since most European schools were on spring break.
And British gentility was normal, which, to American ears, is totally quaint, such as in the elevators (“This is a lift going down,” advised a female voice straight out of Downton Abbey; “watch the closing doors”) in our hotel, steps away from Westminster Abbey, where on May 6 the king will be crowned, as did countless kings and queens over the last thousand years or so.
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