By Courtney Rozen, Humeyra Pamuk and Jonathan Allen
FRONT ROYAL, Virginia, April 30 (Reuters) - Britain's King Charles and Queen Camilla began wrapping up their four-day state visit to the U.S. with a very quick stop by the White House to bid farewell to U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, having already charmed him at a formal dinner two days prior.
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 U.S. winning its independence from monarchy and British colonial rule, cueing 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 in 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 U.S.-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, 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 U.S. 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 toward 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.
CHARLES VIEWS 'NORTH AMERICAN TRADITION' OF POTLUCK
The royal trip has seen Charles draw smiles from lawmakers in the U.S. 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 UK 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 City on September 11, 2001, placing flowers and a hand-written note at the memorial where the World Trade Center'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 who 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 donuts, 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.
Charles 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, the royal couple will fly to Bermuda for Charles' first visit as sovereign to the British territory that, unlike the U.S., has not obtained independence.
(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Tim Reid; Writing by Jonathan Allen; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
