We're checking a few more things off our Explore London list this Summer... this time it was Last Night of the Proms. We went to the Last Night of the Proms Concert in Hyde Park... along with 40,000 other people. I've always wanted to go to the Last Night of the Proms. I've seen it on television a couple of times and it looks like lots of fun.

(We weren't special enough to go to the concert at Royal Albert Hall. To qualify for a seat at the hall you have to have bought tickets to 5 other Proms concerts. To get a standing ticket - a Prommer - you have to queue. Some people camp out for weeks beforehand to get tickets to be a prommer.)

Obviously they were keen to make it an authentic British experience. We had to queue for almost an hour to get into Hyde Park.

The headline act for the Hyde Park Proms Concert was Barry Manilow. I think a lot of the people at the concert were there just for Barry. They knew all the words, while we didn't recognise most of the songs. We did get up and bounce along to Copacabana and Can't Smile Without You. Gotta love the cheese.

Traditionally the night ends with the singing of some unofficial British national anthems: Rule Britannia, Jerusalem and Land of Hope and Glory. Then at the very end they sing the British national anthem, God Save the Queen followed by Auld Lang Syne. Luckily, they put the words on the screen so we could sing along too.

I have never seen so many flags being waved at once. It seemed that everyone in the audience was waving a union jack. It was all very patriotic.




I'm a little bit jealous. We don't have anything similar in Australia. We don't even have any songs that we all know. Some of us don't even know the words to the national anthem.

More photos on Facebook.