I've been waiting 5 years for this day - redemption day!!
I won't bore myself reliving an awful navigational error that had myself and Sue visiting the Windsor Castle Pub, instead of Windsor Castle because today I GOT IT RIGHT!!
Popped onto our bus and 30 mins later we were within spitting distance of the Castle and our 9.30am - 10am entry time. The sun even poked it's head through for most of our visit. I love the Castle, but had forgotten how big it was. We saw
- state rooms that I hadn't seen before
- viewed Queen Mary's 100 year old Doll House (King George V's wife)
- visited a lovely new cafe
- met an Australian Windsor Castle employee
- saw the Queen's (and Prince Phillips) final resting place in St George's Chapel - built from 1475 to 1511.
As some may be aware, you are not allowed to take photos inside the Castle, so here are my money shots from outside:
Below are my photos of St George's Chapel where Her Majesty is laid to rest along with the likes of Jane Seymour and King Henry VIII. To the right of the first photo, is the door we entered and the last photo is the main entrance (and also where Harry and Meghan stood after being married). I did have a tear in my eye as I paid my respects (incredible sovereign and lady):
Now I can't be sure, but it appears 'someone' (I'm guessing Chippy) took some sneaky photos of Queen Marys 100yr old doll house. Everything was built to a scale of 1:12 between 1921 and 1924 by the leading British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. It contains works from over 1,500 of the finest artists, craftspeople and manufacturers of the early 20th century.
All the lights work, there's a gramophone with records that actually work if you play them and if you turned a tap on or looked at a fountain, you'd see the water flowing - very impressive. There's even a library with books of original works by famous literary names of the day, to a fully stocked wine cellar and a garden. No detail was forgotten.
These are the photos Chippy was able to surreptitiously capture with his tiny paws (having first put down his peanut) bless the cheeky little sod:
Having satiated our longing to visit Windsor Castle again (or for the first time), we headed out and ran into some people who heard our accent and started to chat with us. During our conversation one of them mentioned he was part of a Welsh Choir who were going to sing at a nearby Church in an hour and invited us along. We responded with 'sure, we'd love to'.
To while away the 45mins, we sat in the sun - here's Sue lapping it up with her hot chocolate:
We still had some time to kill, so thought we'd check out some of the gift shops. Look who I ran in to:
On the way to the church, I had a bit of an incident:
We headed into the Church and listened to the 27 strong male voice choir from Chepstow, Wales for an hour. They were really good and I even knew about two thirds of the songs. Half way through they even mentioned there was a couple of Australian females in the audience - how cool was that!! Here they are:
As we walked out of the Church, our bus pulled up, so we were able to jump straight on and head back to our airbnb. Clearly 'someone' was looking out for us!!
Upon our arrival, Chippy was happily sitting on the couch watching TV, as if he'd been here all day!!
Great day finished with fish and chips and tomorrow it's Hampton Court.
Life is good 😋😉😇
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