Day for a parade

January 1, 2008

Greg and I woke up and decided that we didn't want to sit around all day, we would rather go to the New Years Day Parade that London hosts every year. We found a spot near Trafalgar Square, right near one of the performing posts, so that was good. We were about half way through the parade route so it only took about 30 minutes for the parade to reach us once it started, however, we did get there about an hour early so we had a a little waiting to do, no big deal.

This is the same parade the Greg and Jenny marched in when they were in high school, so it was good for Greg to see it from a different perspective. We enjoyed watching all of the bands, dance groups, floats, and the motorcycles (both Harley and Honda owners had groups in the parade). The one thing I will say is that we had an awesome band director. Mr. Brasco would never have let us march with music attached to our instruments or arms, and the lines on most of those bands was horrendous. The largest band only had 192 members, maybe half the size of the bands that we were used to marching in.

Band from Hawaii:



A very funny Scottish band (the played the bagpipes and such but it was an all Indian band):



One of the Harley's from the Surrey Harley Club (he even has an American flag):



One of my favorite groups was the dance group from Dallas, TX called the Wranglers, they did line dancing but they were very energetic. With about 10 floats left for us to see it began to rain, not a hard rain, just a slow steady rain, more annoying than anything. We stayed and watched the end of the parade and then decided to go to lunch.

The Wranglers dance group:



Another great group, they were the Chinese dragons:



There was a restaurant about a block away that we had wanted to try so we went there, the Texas Embassy Cantina, where we enjoyed fajitas and enchiladas. While it isn't the best Mexican food it was still pretty good.

We started heading back to our flat, stopped in at a few shops. and made it home a little after 6:00 pm to settle in and watch a movie.