It didn’t take long — barely a day after arriving in California for military training, Prince Harry was spotted out enjoying San Diego’s nightlife at the weekend, reports said.
The third in line to the throne was spotted in McP’s Irish Pub and Grill, where he shared a burger and beers with some friends, according to the KGTV television station, which published a fuzzy picture of the prince drinking.
“He said: ‘I’m glad to be here,’” said Ted Taylor, bar manager at the pub in Coronado, just outside San Diego and about two hours away from the naval base in El Centro where Harry arrived on Thursday.
“He sat outside at a picnic table and ate a burger and beer. He was very personable. He was a nice guy, very low-key,” Taylor said.
Victor Swircz, in the pub with his fiancee Laurie, said he spotted Harry and went and asked if he could have his picture taken with the royal visitor. The prince declined, but Swircz had another idea, according to KGTV.
“Can we get a picture with your security guard?” Swircz said. “And [Harry] goes: ‘Sure, no problem. I’ll take it.’ He grabbed my camera and he took the picture of me, Laurie and his security guard whose name was Mark.”
The fun-loving royal was also reported to have been to the Andaz Hotel in San Diego’s historic Gaslamp district.
Harry, known as Captain Wales in the armed forces, arrived in California at the end of last week to learn to fly Apache helicopter gunships in terrain similar to Afghanistan.
The prince will return to Britain a fully fledged Apache pilot at the end of the two-month training, but Britain’s Ministry of Defence has refused to comment on speculation that he has been given the green light to return to Afghanistan.
The 27-year-old has made it clear he is determined to serve again in Afghanistan, where his deployment as a soldier in 2007 to 2008 had to be hastily cut short after a media blackout was breached.
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