It was yet again that time of the week...Wednesday, which meant another group outing. Today's outing meant we were headed to Windsor Castle. We had to get up early in order to make it to Paddington station by 9:00 to catch the Heathrow Express. We ended up having to take two trains to get there but as promised the Heathrow Express was super fast and it only took us about 25 minutes to reach our first destination: Windsor Castle.
Phillipa took us on a tour of the outside first and told us some cool facts. The queen was actually in residence so we were not able to see the state rooms...but there was a chance of getting to see her which was exciting! Sadly we never did, nor did we actually expect to, but it was still fun knowing she was so close! A neat fact is that you know the queen is in residence or not based on the flag that is flying, so its not like they keep it a secret where she is staying.
About the time we were all freezing we headed to go see the dollhouse which is actually 1/12th the size of the house! The details were amazing on this thing. At one point it apparently had water that worked in it and everything...this would be a little girls dream...okay maybe a big girls dream too! Sadly we could not take any pictures of it which was rather disappointing because I really wish I could show people how incredible it really was!
From there we had more of a tour of the outside and then since we quickly got cold again got a 15 minute break to go warm up or go to the bathroom. We spent our time warming up in the gift shop and being silly trying on the kids guard hat. Our last stop at Windsor was to visit the cathedral. This had to be one of my highlights because they had huge vents on the floor that were blowing out heat!!! We stood there for quite a while trying to warm up...something that seemed impossible to accomplish the entire day. In the cathedral there were some neat pieces of art work as well as the tomb of George V...my character wayyy back in our very first week in London.
After finishing up looking around the church we broke up to have our lunch break. Originally Jeana and I had packed our lunch but it was just way to cold to sit on a bench and eat it outside so we headed to a pub with a few of the girls to have a nice hot meal. It again felt so nice to sit in some heat...well worth paying for a meal!! After lunch we ran into Phillipa who took us to what is called the long road. Its the road that stretches over 3 miles that the queen rides to enter the castle. It was really neat to be able to look down the road and just see it go and go and go. It was a neat little bonus to our trip! While walking to and from the road Phillipa quizzed us on what we had remembered and I luckily guessed the correct king for my question...though I did admit it was a complete guess :)
Our final stop was to head to Eton college, one of the most prestigious boy schools in London. It was just a short walk to get to Eton and we had fun on the way. Nathan had me tell him different animals while he made their sounds :)
This was one of the neatest things we got to do because we actually got to go on a private tour with one of the professors who actually taught Prince William!!! He took us to the original schoolroom, another larger instructional room and finally the cathedral. In these classrooms the boys would etch their names in the wood which made for such a cool look. Their names were in the walls, as well as on the desks, benches and even supports. One neat one that he pointed out was the author Shelley. There were also carvings of Prince William, but they were not done by William himself...still neat nonetheless. The cathedral was absolutely beautiful and I wish I could remember more of the things he told us about it but I'm afraid to many other facts are crowding my brain! There was a neat story about how the paintings were washed away and were slowly uncovered over the years though.
Once our tour was done it was time to head home. We had to catch the Heathrow Express yet again and were home in no time. Everyone was sort of out of sorts because we were all hitting the exhaustion stage and stressed from the amount of work piling up. Once we got back us girls locked ourselves in Jeana and I's room and got busy working on our homework. We actually never even went downstairs except to grab some snacks to get ourselves through the night. The hard work paid off though as we all made progress on our homework...though it wasn't quite as much as any of us wanted. But some was better than none. At 2 am we decided it was time to call it quits and get some rest!
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