Windsor Castle and Town

 Windsor Castle

Driving up to the castle involved going a short distance through the town of Windsor. At this point in the trip, every last rock was fascinating to me...🤣 I mean, I was HERE! In England! The real place, not the EPCOT DisneyWorld version! Yeah, trust me, this did wear off eventually...but it took a few days as you'll see.

So, part of the 1200 pictures I took are just the approach to the castle, because it STILL fascinates me that people just live and work in a town where a massive castle overlooks the landscape as if that's just a totally normal thing. (And for them, it is, of course! But it is alien to me, and I loved it).

And just after getting through the main gates, I started what would become a daily tradition: the family "castle selfie". We had various degrees of thrill about this, but my philosophy was that I can get pictures of everything we saw on the Internet anywhere...but I can only get pictures of my family in those places if I take them myself!

We picked up these little audio box things and earphones and started our tour. The downside to this one is that photography is not allowed inside the building - it IS the Queen's home, after all! My "brain pictures" are already fading, but again, a Google search will bring up tons of professional shots of all the rooms we saw, without some random tourist's head in the way. 😜While we were touring, we stopped and talked to a couple of the docents, and learned how to tell (by the flag flying over the castle) whether or not the Queen was in residence (the Union Jack means she's not there, but her Standard flying means she is). Turns out, that day, she and Charles, Camilla, and several other members of the Royal family were in the same building as us! We even saw some preparations being done to take them to the Royal Ascot, although we never glimpsed any actual Royalty. Still, we were breathing the same air. ;)

After our inside tour, we walked around the rest of the outside of the building, and here we got to take a bunch of pictures. Some of my favorites are below. N remembered to take videos, too, which I love for the purpose of getting the audio to help take me back to that moment in time.

The Queen's garden

Approaching the entrance through the grounds

The lamps have crowns!

Loved the mix of architectural styles

                                  Me, posing in front of the guard

N showing off her joy of being here!

Weird crop of this sign, but I was taking the picture in the middle of a stairwell about to be run over by another party...but it made me chuckle.

S and Curt waiting for us to be finished taking pictures already, so we can go inside and see more...        

After we had finished our extensive tour of the Castle and grounds, we set out to explore the town of Windsor as well. We were hoping for some food at this point, as we were unsure of when we last ate, or what time dinner might be. We lucked upon a cute little cafe serving afternoon tea, just the thing to fill our tummies and our bucket lists! Eating afternoon tea in the shadow of a castle?? Yes, please.

Finally, feeling a bit more explore-y, we wandered around the town and shops a bit more, until we finally were tired enough to want to get back to our hotel for some sleep. 

Curt and I then remembered it was our 21st wedding anniversary, and so we went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner and drinks, while the girls claimed they were not hungry and stayed in their room.

As "first day"s go, this one was just about perfect!