Winsor Castle

(8th day)

Despite of the headache fuel problem, we still have a little bit more time left before we need to check in at 4 pm. So, we drove to Windsor Castle for a quick tour. Sad to say, this was going to be our last destination.

Same like many other places in England, it's kind of difficult to find the car park in the town center. So, it's better to park the car outside the town center and walk in, to save time.

Due to raining reason, the bar was just quiet.

Turn left, and we saw Windsor Castle from far. This is the rear entry gate on Thames Street.

We walked up the hill slowly, and was getting closer and closer to the castle.

Windsor Castle, located in the English county of Berkshire, is the largest inhabited castle in the world. Together with Buckingham Palace in London and Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh, Windsor Castle is one of the principal official residences of the British monarch. Queen Elizabeth II spends many weekends of the year at the castle, using it for both state and private entertaining. Her other two residences, Sandringham House and Balmoral Castle, are the Royal Family's private homes.

Since it was begun by William the Conqueror in the 11th Century to its prestigious stature as the ancestral home of Queen Elizabeth II today, Windsor has stood for nearly a millennium.

The Castle Hill entrance to Windsor Castle. Today, this is one of the busy tourist attraction in England.

On 20 November 1992, a fire which began in the Queen's private chapel quickly spread. The fire raged for 15 hours until it had destroyed nine of the principal state rooms, and severely damaged over 100 more, in all the larger part of the upper ward. One-fifth of the floor space of the castle was damaged.



The restoration programme was not completed until 1997. 70% of it was funded by the decision to open to the public for the first time the state rooms of Buckingham Palace. The total cost of repairing the damage was £37 million The restoration was undertaken at no additional cost to the British taxpayer.




So successful was the restoration and faithfulness to the original plans and decorations that the distinction between old and new is hard to detect. Although some of the rooms that had been gutted by the fire were completely redesigned in a modern interpretation, the new design is very organic and of the Gothic style. However, what is less obvious to the eye is that the restoration work resulted in significant improvements, particularly to the arrangements of the public rooms and the service quarters.




Aerial view of the castle.





Windsor Castle, a thousand-year-old forthress transformed into a royal palace. This well-known silhouette of a seemingly medieval castle was not created, however, until the 1820s by Jeffry Wyatville.





Well, there is nothing much we can see since we didn't pay to get inside the castle.

Many parts of the Castle are open to the public, including the precincts; the State Apartments; Queen Mary's famous dolls' house; St George's Chapel and the Drawing Gallery.

Among the highlights of a visit to Windsor is Queen Mary's Dolls' House, the most famous dolls' house in the world. Despite of raining that day, a long queue was form outside the doll house.

Saw this beautiful mother-and-sons postcard on the street. A decade after her death, Princess Diana still looms large in Britain's psyche. Her life was truly a legendary and will continue to live as the Queen in English People's heart.

Statue again.

The rain didn't stop that day. Although clumsy we looked, we tried to walk around the town area as far as possible.

This restaurant is slanted a bit to the left.

An indoor shopping center that near to the Windsor Castle.

An oil painting that cost a few hundred pounds.

Finally, it's time to go. We left the place at around 3 pm.

We returned the car to the car rental, then took a shuttle bus to go to the Heathrow Airport terminals. Thank God the loading was not too full, and thus, we were given the boarding pass very fast this time. Lucky we, could sit together this time. How great.

Feeling tired and hungry, we simply walked in a restaurant to fill up our empty stomach. A small world it is, KS bumped into his colleague who was dining in there too. He went over their table for a chat. Then he came back 10 min later and told me that his colleauge and his wife and son went to southern part for holiday. They complained a lot about the accomodation, for they have to stay in the very expensive B&B (cost £50 per head) or worst, no vacancy in some places, so they got to sleep inside the rented car. Poor them.

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When his friend got to know about our 'good' accommodation in England, his jaws dropped. Apparently, he didn't aware of the Novotel's promotion to CP staffs at that time. This made KS very proud of himself. Well, I'm proud of him even before we heard of this friend's whine about his accomodation in England, ok. Now I know, I'm even proud of him. Really, KS had done a marvalous job in this trip. For this, I'm very grateful to him.

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After another 13 hours flying, we returned our home sweet home safe and sound. The boys were back to their normal self very fast, but I felt a bit weird to be back home after leaving there for 10 days. That night, I woke up and felt totally lost in nowhere. It really had taken me quite some time to be back to normal.

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There are many things I missed about England. This Walkers brand cookies are one of them. I bought it from the Heathrow Airport, for we wanted to use up all the remaining coins. As for how I came across this Walkers brand, it's because the Novotel hotel had supplimented us 2 packet of Walkers Short Bread every day. And the more we ate it, the more we like it. Actually I like this white chocolate & raspberry biscuits more than the butter shortbread. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it in HK's supermarket, but shortbread. Sigh...KS said he will buy me some when he happen to fly to England next time.

When we landed HK, we saw these Olympics mascots greeting the visitors in the arrival hall. Oh yes, we had missed the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olmpic Games, held on 8-Aug. We could only watch the highlights from England's TV the day after.

Whew, can't believe I have taken more than 2 months time to finally finish up the details of this vacation. I could have just made the journal a short and simple one, but this trip was so wonderful that I feel it worth more of my effort to proper document it.

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So now, as my last entry about the trip has been finished, finally everything has came to its end too. So long, England.

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