a day-trip adventure!

Hello!  Sorry for the lack of recent updates...after a very tiring Thursday day (and night), my first class-free Friday was spent hiding from the rain in cafés and doing lots of homework to free up my weekend for...

WINDSOR CASTLE!!

That's right folks, my first day trip was to visit the one-and-only Windsor.  Aaah I was so excited, especially after a brief but incredibly amazing visit over senior year with the LSHS Band.  This time, we traveled in a group of 5 instead of 50, which helped sooo much.  An early, early morning saw me and the rest of our adventurers (Peter, Coleen, Charlie and Colin!) leaving Kamen-Minerva and taking my internship tube route to Paddington Station (as in Paddington Bear, Paddington Station...so cute!).  I was stressed we weren't going to find our train in such a huge place, but we got it fine and it was seriously nicer inside than most airplanes.  A transfer at Slough put us at Windsor by 11:00 after only a half-hour by train and only 8 pounds!  Best deal ever.

We immediately warmed up with coffee at the ubiquitous Caffé Nero and hustled over to the Lower Ward just in time for the Changing of the Guard...there was a lot of pomp, circumstance and bagpiping, but the whole deal lasted only about five minutes.  Still, it was really cool to see it there, and I can't wait to go watch it at Buckingham, where I've heard it's a much bigger production.  Then we purchased our tickets and witnessed the Domer-bombing (ND takeover) of Windsor...apart from our group of five we saw at least two other groups of 4-6 and a huge group of about 10-12.  Still, we kept to ourselves and had a guided tour of the exterior of the castle, including all the gardens and a ton of the history of the castle's evolution.  It was right up my alley, being the history nerd and Anglophile that I am...everything fascinated me so much!  I wish I had the time, energy and inclination to write about all the awesome little factoids and stories we learned, but there was literally just so much covered that it would take its own post to do it justice.  The history of the Order of the Garter, the stories of the castle's defense strategies and sieges, tales of QE II's state entertaining and banquets, and so much talk about the 1992 fire that destroyed many of the State Departments were just a few topics that were touched upon!

Then we went in the actual castle and started off with Queen Mary's ridiculous dollhouse (doll PALACE, more like it), which has running water, working electricity, real wine in the wine cellar and to-scale replicas of many pieces of art, furniture and decoration actually in Windsor Castle.  I'm not even kidding, I could have spent hours looking at that alone.  Then we saw Queen Elizabeth's childhood dolls, France and Marianne...gifts from the royal family of France.  No big deal or anything, they just had Cartier jewelry and couture clothing by all the major designers of the time.  (Jealous?  Oh yeah.  My American Girl doll collection looks so insignificant now...ha!)  After dolls of all kinds, we saw a selection of Queen Liz's china services...she has 48 sets apparently, each with over EIGHT HUNDRED pieces.  No joke.  And all of them are so intricate, so gold-covered and 100% hand-painted and made.  Really makes our flats' Ikea dinnerware look classy!  ;)

The next stop was the "grand foyer," which was decorated with hundreds of ornamental weapons and dozens of suits of armor and prizes from various countries in the former British Empire.  After that it all starts to blur into this epic progression of rooms that were so grandiose...the chandeliers! The carved ceilings! The stained-glass windows! The priceless art!  The gilded furniture!  Every room was so ornate and massive that it seriously just floored me.  I've never felt so insignificant in my life...or so American!  Highlights:

-the Waterloo room, which commemorates the victory over Napoleon with a portrait series of every major mover or shaker involved in his defeat.  Enormous.
-the room (I forget the name) with Hans Holbein the Younger's portraits of all the Tudors...Henry VIII, Edward, Mary and most awesomely, the portrait of 13-year old Elizabeth I that I've always loved.  My heart seriously almost stopped!
-the musical clock specially designed to play selections from Handel while a coach-and-six rotates around the top.  Absolute genius engineering and craftsmanship!
-the King's bedroom, where one of the Napoleonic descendants and his wife stayed...
-the room with all the solid silver furniture.  Yes...SOLID silver furniture.
-Murals commissioned by Charles II on the ceilings of his private dining chamber and his wife's receiving gallery.  Aaah...I got a crick in my neck from staring up for so long and marveling.
-The Grand Gallery or whatever where all the shields of every member EVER of the Order of the Garter hang.  There have been 1,001 members to date, including every monarch of Britain...the most recent member is HRH Prince William (yum!).  The room was completely destroyed by the Fire of 1992, but the restoration is 100% authentic and used the techniques that were used by the original medieval masons and woodcarvers.  All the shields of disgraced or dishonored knights have been replaced by plain white shields instead...a lot of those from the Tudor era!  The room itself is just such an enormous, impressive spectacle...we spent a good 45 minutes in there alone just talking to one of the wardens of Windsor Castle...she told us some amazing stories about some of the characters whose shields hang there!
-The room where the fire actually started...it's all stone now, and contains one of QE II's state thrones, as well as a suit of armor belonging to Henry VIII...fat old bastard ;)
-Speaking of Henry VIII, there was a special exhibit on to commemorate the 500th anniversary of his ascendancy to the throne...featuring artwork by all the great masters of his time.  I saw works by DaVinci, Canaletto, Rubens, Holbein...I can't even remember all of them, but it was just flooring to be face to face with a real DaVinci especially...he was SUCH a genius!!
-St. George's Chapel.  It's played host to a lot of royal weddings, funerals and every Order of the Garter ceremony from its completion in the 1500s onward.  Entombed within were six or seven of the monarchs of England, including Henry VIII (one of my faves!) and Jane Seymour, Charles I (with his head stitched back on after being beheaded in the 1600s!), and the Queen Mother and King George.  It was such a humbling and impressive place...organ music absolutely thundering out of the most beautiful and ornate organ I think I've ever seen, and tombs in the floor dating back as far as Henry VIII's reign...I accidentally stepped on Charles Brandon's tomb.  Aaaaaaah Charles Brandon.  As in, Henry VIII's best friend and the husband of his sister Princess Mary.  (I'm not obsessed or anything.)
-Getting the requisite English picture with a Royal Guard!!!  :D

We concluded our epic adventure (literally, four hours in the castle and then some more time in St. George's Chapel!) with our first fish and chips of the semester!  I hate to say it, but I wasn't impressed...although the chips part was really good.  Mushy peas, on the other hand, are slightly more appetizing than they look.  Slightly.

Now after another quick train/tube trip back, I'm curled up at home on our tartan plaid couch nursing some sore and tired feet!  We got a really cool book about the castle for 5 pounds (1 pound each from the 5 of us!) and I think I'm going to go continue my nerd-out and read that...lol.  All in all, an EXCELLENT adventure and great way to start our travels outside London!  Cheerio good friends!