Janette & Bentley: Windsor

Windsor Castle was our last stop in England, on a Monday afternoon. We went to the Harry Potter WB studio tour that morning, and Windsor Castle in the afternoon. I managed to drive us there and park without getting us lost in London traffic, even with a detour off the motorway to get petrol.

We ended up in a car park next to a sweeping green field, park, and tennis courts. It was an amazing sight to come around a corner and see the massive castle where the queen spends weekends and vacations. After going through security, we entered and saw that the queen's flag was flying (indicating she was in residence...though when we were done touring the state rooms, the union jack had replaced her flag...indicating she had gone).

We walked all over the grounds, toured through St. George's Chapel...where we had to backtrack and go through the quire twice in order to see the tomb of Henry VIII, wondered at the Knights of the Royal Garter, toured the State Rooms of the castle, and sat down every chance we got. We were tired. Our feet ached. And by the time we were done, we still had a bit of time to kill, since we didn't want to end up in the hotel room at 3pm twiddling our thumbs.

Thinking of the lush park we parked near, I said to Christina, "I wouldn't mind sitting in the shade in a park, people-watching for a while." So, with this in mind, we headed back to the car park and as we are just entering the park, there is a man standing next to a tree, with his back to us, peeing on the tree. Not really what I had in mind as far as people-watching was concerned...it was a classy end to a very royal tour!

We decided maybe sitting in the park was not such a good idea, and did end up back at the hotel room, where we had another adventure checking into the right hotel. (Turns out there are TWO hotels with the same name, within about a mile or two of each other. We ended up at the wrong one, and had to take a rather scary taxi ride to the right one.) It was actually good to be in the hotel, where we had a crappy dinner and turned in early.