Our first impressions of Windsor was that it was a very traditional old school village that just happened to house the Queen’s normal residence and one of the most famous schools ever.
We opted to do the audio tour option of the castle which was weird in itself as it meant we spent the whole time wandering around with mobile phone type devices stuck to our ears and not talking to each other.
We found that the Queen wasn’t home when we visited (I think she may have been in Canada), as the Royal Flag wasn’t flying from the turret.
Next stop was the famous Princess Mary Dolls House which is a massive dolls house that has fully functional plumbing and lighting! There are also miniatures of famous works of art done by the artists themselves and was completed in 1930.
We then moved on to the Photography gallery which was showing a collection of photos of the Queen when she was a little girl right through to when she had her kids. It was nice to see the informal relaxed ones which reminded you that they are all still people.
Our tour then took us to St. George’s Hall which is where the Order of the Garter ceremony takes place each year which was awesome, it had a coat of arms for every person who had been given a knighthood - stretching back to 1920. Hamish even managed to spot Sir Edmund Hillary’s shield.
The rooms in the State apartments were very much like all the other castles and palaces we had seen, lots of gold and jewels and huge paintings everywhere. This was also the site where they had a massive fire in 1992 which destroyed a lot of the valuables, but there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of that now.
As it was Sunday, we couldn’t go into the St.George's Chapel as there were services going on. But we did see some old biddies leaving the chapel and being escorted to their little flats that were inside the castle walls which was quite cute.
We then found our way to the ‘Great Walk’ which is actually just a dead straight road through a pretty standard park which the Queen used to use to exercise her horses. Lou had packed an amazing picnic lunch so we enjoyed the sunshine for a bit.
Next we strolled through the town itself which was full of tourist shops and also expensive boutiquey kind of shops. We got to Eton college, and we were both a little disappointed. We though it would be much more ‘old’ and have cooler looking buildings, although the chapel was pretty cool, see below. We thought that Kings in Auckland and Christ’s in Christchurch looked better.
We didn’t want to pay for the tour around Eton so we kept wandering until we found the river and just walked up the bank for ages back towards the village (it must be noted that Hamish was leading the way at this stage). It wasn’t until we found our way sneaking through a little side gate that we realised the gate said ‘Private, No Entry’, that we had been meandering around the Eton grounds! Nice one Hamish.
After that bit of excitement we had a gelato on the banks of the river back in town and found our way back to the train station, very content.
Highlight: The imposing prescence of the castle, you can see it from pretty much anywhere in the town.
Lowlight: Eton was a disappointment, you would think the school that Royals go to would be heaps flasher!
Interesting fact: If you are granted a knighthood and then you do something naughty, your shield in St. George’s Hall is painted white and your name is erased from the boards. Ouch.
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