Windsor Castle

We met this morning at 9:20 for our trip to Windsor Castle. Peter had an interesting night last night at a club and was late getting up, but we made it to Chancery Lane for my inaugural trip on the Underground. I was very excited as we went into the tube station for some reason. I guess felt like a real Londoner. We took the tube to Paddington Station on the NW side of central London for our train trip out to Windsor. We only made the train by about 5 minutes because we had to print out the tickets that Lizzie bought. Turns out nobody checked our tickets all day, so we could have ridden for free. The trip out was very quick. Peter slept on the train and was almost recovered by the time we made it to Windsor.

Right out of the train station you walk into a mall-like shopping center. We stopped immediately for coffee because we were all pretty tired. In line a nice local lady ordered "the usual" and gave us advice on where to go to watch the guard change. We missed the actual change but we did see the royal band march out of the gates. I had bagpipes stuck in my head the rest of the day. Tickets to the castle cost 14 pounds for students. Worth every penny.

We took a guided tour of the outside of the castle. It has been occupied continuously since the 11th Century. Our tour guide gave us nice tidbits about the history of the building and how each monarch changed it. This is currently Elizabeth II's weekend residence. She host's state dinners and other more stately-type occasions here, while Buckingham is more of an official government type of operation. There is also an official royal residence in Scotland, and the Windsors also own several private palaces. While the outside of the castle looks like a stony medieval castle, the inside displays opulence and history beyond the imagination.

We first entered into a room with Queen Mary's Dollhouse. It is an enormous dollhouse given to the Queen as a gift. Every detail of the dollhouse is exquisite and painstakingly detailed, from the real booze in the tiny little barrels in the cellar, to the real crown jewels and real silver in the dining room. This dollhouse is unbelievable. It actually has real plumbing. Ridiculous. There was a little English boy in front of our group who said "I don't want to see some swotty dollhouse!" to his parents. I think he got quiet when he saw the model Rolls Royce's in the garage. Colleen and Lizzie goffed over the clothes and dolls displayed along the walls.

After the doll house we went into a collection of drawings from the Henry VIII period, including two Da Vinci's from the royal collection and several Holbein portraits (he was the guy that painted the famous portrait of Henry VIII). I wasn't expecting to see Da Vinci in Windsor. But then again I wasn't ready for any of the ridiculous history we saw today. After the drawing room we entered the China room (they have a room to display the different china sets the Queen has. Lizzie freaked out.) and the official State Apartments, where the Queen entertains foreign dignitaries. The entry staircase is flanked by two enormous armored horsemen, weapons beyond the imagination, royal flags and crests, and jewels of all kind. We then went through several rooms filled with portraits of English royalty, more weapons, jewels, and state rooms.

The coolest room in the whole castle is St. George's Hall. I wish I could have taken pictures in the castle instead of this Internet one, but even those can't describe this room. Its an insanely long dining room that can entertain 140 guests on one table. They measure the place settings with a ruler to make sure they line up all the way down. But that's not the cool part. This room hosts every coat of arms of all 1001 knights in the Order of the Garter, the most prestigious honor in the Kingdom. There have only been 1001 knights since 1354 and there can only be 24 at any given time! Apparently one died last night, so the Queen can appoint a new Companion soon. The shields are on the walls and ceiling, and each crest is unique, including the royal crests of Elizabeth, Prince Charles, William, and Harry. We spent about an hour looking at all the crests and talking to the docents about the histories behind all of them. It was amazing. It is my new goal to get invited to a state dinner in this room. The rest of the rooms were all extraordinarily impressive, including the room housing Henry VII's armor. He was a fat man. I also like a portrait of Charles I and his brothers as a young boy. The heir to the throne at this point, he had no idea he would be beheaded by the Parliamentarians. We saw his grave later.

After we exited the castle, exhausted from walking and thinking, we ate our packed lunches on a bench by one of the walls. The bench quite possibly could have been older than the United States of America. Awesome. The Minus the Bear song where they say "sit on a park bench that's older than my country" came into my head. I feel like that is going to happen a lot. After lunch we wandered into St. George's Chapel where the Order of the Garter has its official business and the royals occasionally attend service. The chapel is exquisite with fingerlike stone buttresses emerging from each of the pillars to support the ceiling. We walked into the choir area by the altar in the back of the Church and there on the floor in simple marble letters is the marker denoting the grave of Henry VIII and Charles I. Various other monarchs, including the Queen Mum and Edward VI are buried here. Inside the choir is each individual helmet and coat of arms of all the current members of the Order of the Garter. Sir John Major, former PM, has a coat of arms with cricket balls on it, and his helmet has a stag, since his constituency likes hunting or something like that. The helmets were kickass. I think my coat of arms would have an STL symbol, and maybe some ND blue and gold and some SLUH blue. And some badass latin phrase so it would look official. Throw some lions and crosses in there too.

After the chapel we wandered outside and ran into one of the palace guards. We all took individual pictures of the stoic guards after they did their marching routine with their guns. I went up to the guy, who we named Benji (no idea why), and told him "You have the sweetest job in the world." He blinked. I wonder how many facebook pictures this guy is in. I can't wait to see the Buckingham guards now. Apparently if you touch these guys they have the right to beat you to a pulp, throw you in jail, and fine the crap out of you. So I didn't touch haha. We left the castle and were thoroughly exhausted. Lizzie and Coleen got fish and chips at a local place and Collin and I picked at their leftovers. We took the train back and got back to the flats in time for flat dinner.

While Matt and Chris cooked spaghetti, Collin, Peter and I googled more stuff about the royal line of succession and the Order of the Garter. There are over 800 people in the line of succession, including the king of Norway and Princess of Bulgaria or something like that. All Catholics are excluded. Damn. Flat dinner didn't exactly turn out as well as we had hoped. Somehow the noodles got to gloppy and were all mushy. Chris said "I didn't think it was possible to screw up noodles." We did. All in all it was a pretty successful day. It made me real excited to do more day trips and begin traveling to other countries. I would highly recommend Windsor to anyone who has any sort of appreciation for history. I thought it would be sort of boring with a bunch of old furniture. I was thinking of the time we toured a crappy house in Charleston and paid a ton of money to see like four tables and some curtains. This place is definitely worth a day trip. Especially in the spring when the place will be green.