Turned out they meant William and Kate which had been announced the previous day when we'd been on a plane, so they knew about it before we did. Then they asked her if she had met the royal family, in all seriousness. She thought it was so funny she had to text all her friends.
Doesn't seem like such an odd question or assumption for them to make after having only just having met the royal couple on board a commercial flight themselves. Who'd have thought that would happen? Maybe they wanted to find out if this is a more common occurance than one would have thought especially since since England is a small island country rather than a large continent . Perhaps they were just trying to look for any old reason, however trivial, to strike up a conversation with someone.
My Mother is a distant relative to Sophie Rhys Jones (their great grandfathers were brothers). My Cousins wife in London is a fashion designer, who's name you'd likely know, and designed several of Diana's most famous gowns. My Aunt's husband grew up with Prince Charles because his father was one of the Palace Body Guards. This Uncle works for the royal Mint and continues to meet up with Charles whenever his duties bring him there. One of my Aunts toured Diana around the Sony corperate offices in Wales when Diana visited there. I once spotted Fergie and her two girls myself getting into a chauffeured car while I was standing on the Spur road outside Buckingham Palace back in 1997. Because of all of that, it would be easy for me to assume everybody else has such experiences and wouldn't know for sure unless I asked.
I have relatives all over Britian, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Austrailia and Canada. The Irish, Canadians and Aussies are usually very warm but the thing that strikes me when I visit England is how snooty the British can sometimes be to Americans (or people they think are Americans like me). Even when they visit here, they often seem resentful of the way of life here or appear to be looking for a way to be superior and condesending, or for improprieties in what Americans (in particular) say, do or may be wearing. It seems as if they don't want anyone to think that anything impresses them. I think the they may simply misunderstand the Americans rather honest way of communicating or their sometimes overly open ways.
9/11 was 13 years ago so the likely reason you haven't had that many American tourists is becasue the economy hasn't been the best here or worldwide for that matter. It is recovering here however so you'll probably be seeing more American visitors. Try to remember that the I.Q. of people on vacation tends to be much lower than it is when they are at home, but not so low that they don't realize when they are being snickerd at. Expect them to sometimes ask rather silly questions about things that are obvious to those who live there or have had the opportunity to travel more.
