London Day Trip to Windsor Castle

On the last Sunday of my friend's visit we decided to skeddadle from London and head to Windsor Castle (located in the lovely town of Windsor), a few hours away. The underground line that we live on was down over the weekend for repairs, so we ended up taking a one hour bus ride through various industrial estates - showing my friend the other less scenic side of London. We then caught a train out of the city, to the lovely (read NOT lovely, actually derelict) town of Slough. Essentially this town is about as nice as its name sounds. We then connected to another bus, and finally and long last ended up in the town of Windsor.  

Windsor is small, and cute, and feels much different to London which made it worthwhile to travel all that way. A much more "village" like feel, and we managed to hit it before peak tourist time in the summer. The day we were there was grey and nearly drizzly, although the sun did poke its head out a few times. But the threat of rain kept quite a few people away, so we could wander the streets without being elbow deep in tourists. Aparently at the castle during the summer there are so many people in all the rooms that you have to shuffle through in one long continuous line. ugh- that would NOT be worth the steep cover price. But the castle was beautiful and we managed to spend a good few hours wandering through gold encrusted rooms, and various extensive weapon collections. There were no pictures allowed inside, but I did snap a few good outside ones- usually with Rhys inserted for scale.

the moat is now a garden

my favorite 2 tourists for scale!

It turns out that while we were there, the queen was also there visiting for the day - the castle is still an active residence for all the royals. Sadly since it was a Sunday the "chapel" (Read: enormous cathedral-like structure) was closed except for services. There was a sort of lucky dip, where the queen was attending one of the 3 services of the day, and you could choose to attend one service. 

We didn't end up attending a service- instead we left the castle and went down the road to Eton school for boys. This school is very very expensive to go to, and very very ancient (founded in 1440 by King Hnery VI).  It is a sort of finishing school for every man who wants to go into politics - very chummy chummy- with beautiful ancient brick buildings: