SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
Front Royal, Virginia: King Charles and Queen Camilla began wrapping up their four-day state visit to the United States with a swift stop by the White House to bid farewell to President Donald Trump, having already charmed him at a formal dinner two days ago.
After barely six minutes inside, Charles, whose heart has always been in the countryside, and Camilla departed to spend their final hours in small-town America and Appalachian wilderness: marching bands, Little League baseball, bluegrass music, Girl Scouts and the bird-filled Blue Ridge Mountains were all on the itinerary.
The official reason for the royal trip was to mark the 250th anniversary of the US winning its independence from the monarchy and British colonial rule, prompting multiple wry jokes from Charles in speeches to Washington’s elite about his fourth-great-grandfather, George III, being on the losing side of the American Revolutionary War.
But it was also designed to mend what Charles called at Tuesday’s state dinner with Trump an “unbreakable bond” and “indispensable alliance” between the two countries, lately strained by the UK, alongside other European allies, declining to join the two-month-old US-Israeli war against Iran.
It seemed to work. As enraged as he has been by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump told reporters at some length how fond he was of his “great friend” Charles the day after their dinner: “When you like the king of a country so much, it probably helps your relationship with the prime minister.”
Posing for photographs outside the White House’s South Portico on Thursday morning (US time), Trump, who sometimes revels in his political opponents denouncing him as a would-be king, pointed to the monarch and said: “He’s the greatest king, in my book.”
The two men, joined by Camilla and first lady Melania Trump, went inside, came back out six minutes later, and the royals got in their car to tour several sites in Virginia.
“Great people,” Trump, who ran on an anti-immigration platform, said towards the departing motorcade, after giving it a wave and a thumbs up.
“We need more people like that in our country.”
What the president meant by “people like that” was unclear, although his staff may have provided a clue when they released a photograph of Charles and Trump smiling together earlier in the week with the briefest of captions: “TWO KINGS” followed by a crown emoji.
The royal trip has seen Charles draw smiles from representatives and senators in the US Congress to young Harlem school children at an urban farm in New York City.
Among the biggest smiles of all came from Trump himself, as Charles revealed a gift for the president at Tuesday’s White House reception: the original bell that hung from the conning tower of a Royal Navy submarine launched from a British shipyard in 1944 and named HMS Trump.
Before heading to a street party in the small Virginia town of Front Royal, Charles crossed the Potomac River to pause at Arlington National Cemetery, a venerated site where tens of thousands of the country’s war dead are buried.
He was greeted by a 21-gun salute before laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
On Wednesday, the King and Queen commemorated victims of al-Qaeda’s attack on New York on September 11, 2001, placing flowers and a handwritten note at the memorial where the World Trade Centre’s twin towers once stood.
In the streets of Front Royal, home to about 15,000 people, tiny American and British flags were distributed before the arrival of someone locals agreed was the most famous person the town has welcomed since 1950, when the singer and actor Bing Crosby made an unforgettable visit.
Tables were laden with apple-butter doughnuts, pulled pork, crab tots, jerk chicken wings, burgers, custard, pizzas and Girl Scouts’ cookies in what Buckingham Palace explained in an advisory was the apparently exotic “North American tradition” of “a ‘potluck’ meal”.
Charles and Camilla looked at the food and asked questions, but did not eat it.
The King then wondered where a local restaurant got its oysters. The answer was: nearby Chesapeake Bay.
“I wish that I was on old Rocky Top, down in the Tennessee hills,” sang a bluegrass band in a paean to simple mountain life as Charles and Camilla stopped to listen. “Ain’t no smoggy smoke on Rocky Top, ain’t no telephone bills.”
They spent about 40 minutes at the party before continuing their tour, greeting the mayor, the Virginia governor, a group of cloggers and a pen filled with Kerry Hill sheep, a breed native to Wales.
Later in the day, Charles flew to Bermuda for his first visit as sovereign to the British territory that, unlike the US, has not obtained independence.
Reuters
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