Sunday, March 30th

Off to Windsor to visit the Queen! Her royal standard was flying above the castle, announcing that she was in residence.

Sunday morning came earlier than usual- I mean that literally. We had to "spring ahead" for daylight savings time... again. We packed up our bags and enjoyed one last breakfast with our travelling companions before heading west to Windsor. We left London out of Paddington Station and had one transfer before arriving at our destination. Walking about 10 minutes, we found our B&B, left our bags, got a key, and headed for the castle.
Windsor Castle was easy to find; it is the reason for the town after all. Keith and I enjoyed a picnic style lunch on a sunny bench just outside before we went in. It was so nice to feel the spring weather again! There weren't too many crowds and we got in straight away. Audio guides were included in our admission and, as always it seems with the British Royal Residences, they were excellently done. We had time to take in every part of the castle that was open and a free band concert to boot. Once you get in the castle, there are no extra fees for anything inside which was nice. Though there were a few small gift shops, since this is primarily a residence there was no cafe. I was getting quite hungry by late afternoon and had depleted my emergency supplies so I ended up buying a tin of shortbread cookies. They were delicious, and the tin will be used repeatedly, but I think they were the most expensive cookies I have ever eaten. St. George's Chapel was closed to tourists (read: people wearing audio guides) as it was Sunday and there were church services throughout the day. We attended the Evensong at 5pm which was beautiful even though the Chapel Choir was not there. St. George's is the chapel associated with the Knights of the Garter and each seat in the choir area is associated with one of those knights, adorned with their family crest as well as a helmut and partially drawn sword to signify their protection of the sovereign. As the Knights have been around for quite a long time, some seats have numerous plaques of crests. I sat beside a seat which had a black cord draped over it announcing that its knight had recently passed away- Sir Edmund Hillary.
This photo looks across from the State Rooms exit to the private Royal Residences. That's right- the Queen and her corgies are somewhere in there!
Here's that band concert I mentioned earlier. As we were waiting for it to begin, I examined our entry tickets and discovered that if we filled in a certain part of it and had it stamped before we left, then we could come back on another 5 days this year on the same ticket. It seemed too good to be true, but sure enough, we had it validated and made plans to come back the next morning and take another look around.

Following Evensong, we left the castle and found ourselves wandering some very empty streets. It seems most people just come to Windsor on a day trip so we had the place pretty much to ourselves (well, after the business of London it seemed that way anyway!). We ate a quiet Italian restaurant, strolled around a bit more, then retired to our B&B relatively early as we were wiped out from our long day after a short night's sleep.

We decided to get most of our packing done that night so that we could maximize our last morning of vacation. One of the shops we had been in earlier had a teapot, cup & saucer set which I had quite liked, but I wasn't sure I had room to pack it home so I hadn't purchased it yet. We had travelled carry-on only this time, but thanks to my superior packing skills I was able to carve out a place in my smaller bag which looked to be just the right size for the box I wanted to fit into it. I can just imagine what that looked like going through the x-ray machine!