Just in case we hadn't gotten enough of the Royal Family this week, we spent Thursday at the races at Royal Ascot. With the Queen & Prince Philip.
The Queen and other members of the royal family arrived by horse-drawn carriage from Windsor. 
Prince Andrew and his two daughters were there. See, he's looking right at me as I wave to him -- Hi Andrew!
He even waved back -- unlike some musicians I've seen. (In Baltimore a few years ago, Stevie Wonder's limo stopped next to me on the street. Being a huge SW fan, I waved enthusiastically at him. Alas, no return wave. It was as if he hadn't seen me at all... (Duh.) My family still gives me a hard time about waving to a blind man and then expecting him to return the gesture.)
Royal Ascot is the UK counterpart to the Kentucky Derby, but with a dress code. All women at Ascot must wear a dress, and a hat. Or, in lieu of a hat, ladies can wear a "fascinator", a headpiece attached to the hair with a comb, and usually made of feathers or flowers or bows. Like this:
For men, the dress code varies by where you are seated -- for General Admission seats at Ascot, men must wear a coat and tie; in the "Royal Enclosure" box seats, men must wear a morning coat and a top hat.
The event was ALL about people-watching. It was a "see and be seen" event. The hats were fantastic, and everything about the day was colorful. Here are some images from our day. I'm sipping the quintessential British summer cocktail -- Pimms and lemonade, with a garnish of cucumber and orange!
This girl's hat featured a very detailed bathroom scene...and no, I don't know why.
This hat was an eye-catcher...
...as was this one.
In fact, a lot of them were...
Today's London Daily Telegraph newspaper had photos of lots of the hats -- including some of the ones I have here! -- in the paper today. Click here for their cool Ascot hat photo gallery. (And the paper says that the girl wearing the green hat with the lump of reddish-brown on the top is Miss England. Pretty girl, ugly hat!)
There was a lot of partying going on.
We were told that the best people watching of the day is early evening, as all of the fancy-dressed people stumble drunkenly away from the site. Alas, we saw only the good -- we didn't stay long enough to see the bad & the ugly. The Royal Ascot facility itself was amazing.
Huge, newly renovated, and spectacular to look at. The photos just don't capture it's size and grandeur. D and I moved around a lot -- all the better for people watching -- so we saw the facility from many angles. This is the front (the side not facing the track) where the winner's circle is located.
And this is part of the track side. 
You'll see five levels worth of luxury boxes (the "Royal Enclosure" areas) and a semicircular area for the Queen's box:
All we could see of her in the box was the top of her blue hat! And yes, there actually WAS some horse racing. 
D checked out the odds on each horse.
We tried to channel my Mom's awesome good luck remotely, by calling her and having her pick an exacta combination for us on the big race of the day, The Gold Cup. I didn't tell her a thing about the race or the odds of the horses; I just read her the names of the ten horses in the race. She selected the combination of #5 (Le Miracle) and #8 (Coastal Path). We were hopeful... 
...and placed a whopping $4 bet on the exacta. If only bets paid out on who was ahead for the majority of the race, we'd have won big... Although #5 and #8 were neck-and-neck at the lead for almost a mile and a half (of a super-long 2 mile race), they faded at the end and the favorite, #7 Yeats, came from behind to win. (#8 placed.) Apparently Mom needs to be here in person for the magic to work completely! Maybe next year??
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