Rachel in England: Windsor Castle

On Sunday, Kat and I went out to dinner with Liz and Ele, our friends from EPS and were asked the question of what we had left to do. Kat said she had never been to Windsor and I said I hadn’t either. We made plans (pending on approval from Josh as our Sunday night dinner was supposed to have been on Saturday, but Kat forgot about her Olympic tickets!!!) to go to Windsor Castle on Tuesday. Luckily, Kat had scheduled everything correctly and we got to go to Windsor!

It was tough getting there! TFL screwed us up big time! We left from the Heathway and went to Waterloo and had to take a train to Windsor. The only train headed for Windsor was one labeled ‘Windsor E Drny’. We had no clue what this meant but hoped it was the right one. According to TFL, we were then supposed to get off at Clapham Junction and walk for 1 minute and we’d be at the castle. Now, this sounded a bit funny, but we did it anyways because we didn’t want to miss out. Well, there’s no castle at Clapham Junction, in case anyone was wondering.

We had to wait a half hour for the next train to come heading to Windsor E Drny and while we were waiting, we were trying to figure out if that was even the correct train! After the half hour was up, we had no train. Another ten minutes went by, still no train. Twenty minutes later, we get an announcement saying that there was a delay and we could catch our train on track 5. We ran across the tracks to get on the train that was there. As it was pulling away, it started listing the stations it was going to. Sadly, Windsor was not one of them! We had gotten on the wrong train!

We had to get off at the next stop and wait for the train that was headed back the way we had just come. As we were about to board the train, we saw the train we needed to take go past the station. Once we were back at Clampham Junction, we waited another ten minutes before we finally got on the correct train. We stayed on the train all the way to the end. Overall though, this train trip worked out because….

We got to see an Olympic torch!!!!

This was the station master of Windsor and Eaton Dorny’s torch. He had carried it and was now letting people hold it and take pictures. Here’s my picture!

And Kat!

And Kat and me holding it together.

Before we go into the rest of our trip, let’s have a bit of history on Windsor Castle. Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire. It’s used by the Queen as a weekend retreat and she holds some official dinners there. It is almost 1000 years old!

This is Windsor Shopping Center. Looked cute but we did not go in, having wasted enough time on the train debacle, we wanted to see as much of Windsor Castle as we could.

Here is a shot of Windsor Castle from the pub across the street where we had a fish and chips lunch.

And one without the window bars.

This is the round tower.

The gardens were amazing.

The chapel.

Me and Kat and our sweet audio guides.

On our walk round, we saw St. George’s Chapel. This is where several Kings and Queens of the United Kingdom are buried! It was so pretty inside. Unfortunately, you aren’t allowed to take pictures so you are going to have to deal with the ones I snuck in.

This is the tomb for Princess Charlotte.

If you’ve seen The King’s Speech, this is the king who gave the speech. The one who lead Great Britain through World War 2. He and the Queen Mum lay here and the Queen’s sister’s ashes lay here.