Craned Necks, Shrugged Shoulders

At that moment, Michael Blue, 55, a bicycle messenger on his way to deliver a package to the Commerce Department, put on his brakes.

"Camilla, is that her name?" he asked, acknowledging that he preferred wife number one. "Diana was cool. She had a certain je ne sais quoi , if you will. She was prettier than this one, that's for sure, but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

An hour later and a few miles away, Flora Campbell, a retired maintenance worker, also invoked Diana's name to explain why she would not hang around for a look as the couple arrived in her Southeast neighborhood to visit the School for Educational Evolution and Development.

"She stole the prince," Campbell said, referring to the duchess as she got behind the wheel of her car. "And now she's married to him. I don't care for her."

Her friend George Lewis, 66, who lives on C Street SE, said, "They don't know me from Adam, and I don't know them." He then disappeared inside his modest brick house.

But curiosity got the best of him. A few minutes later, he came outside, a $3 cigar in his teeth and an instant camera in his hand. He stood outside the school grounds, behind a nine-foot-tall fence, with Lila Chambers, 76, a retired computer operator, waiting.

"She wears some bad hats, but she doesn't look as good as Diana," Chambers said of the duchess. "Now, Diana could wear some hats."

Just then, the royal entourage of limousines and security vans rolled through the gate and up to the school.

"They closed that gate real quick, didn't they?" Chambers said as Lewis looked through his viewfinder at the crowd of dark suits and security in the distance.

"I can't even get a picture," he grumbled.

The view was far better from a slope around the corner, where the residents of recently built townhouses had sightlines to the school's entrance. Eric Banks, 35, a National Guard sergeant, answered his door in a T-shirt and shorts and said he had more important tasks than stargazing.

"I'm going to cut my grass before my fiance gets on me," he said, adding that his attitude might have been different if Diana were visiting. "She kept it real," he said. "She looked out for the needy, people who weren't born with a silver spoon in their mouth."

Back outside the school, Lewis and Chambers were still hanging on the fence an hour later as the entourage was about to leave. They were joined by Josephine Brent, 69, a retired pharmacist's assistant, who said she was "honored to know they are here in the neighborhood, even though I can't see them."

"It gives you a chill to be part of something," Brent said as the entourage drove past.

Chambers shrugged.

"It gives you a chill standing out in this cold air," she said, folding her arms before heading home.