Windsor Castle

Last week, Molly had a conference outside of London. We decided to go along so she wouldn’t miss us too much. We had a lovely day (though it was a bit wet) exploring Windsor Castle, the occasional home of the Queen of England.

The audio tour was quite entertaining; it featured a little kid who asks lots of questions.

Here’s River standing in front of an arrow slit.

Map reading skills came in handy to figure out which buttons to key into the audio guide.

While the castle exterior was stunning, the interior was at least as fascinating. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to photograph anything. The highlight was probably the enormous doll house complete with running water. I’ve never seen anything quite so detailed. The kids were impressed! We also saw the largest rug in the world under a dining room table, lots of armor, swords, and guns, royal bed chambers, ball rooms, and all the accoutrements.

We are big fans of Roald Dahl’s “The BFG”, and we had hoped to visit him in the house given to him by the queen as a reward for saving the children of the world from all the other horrible giants. We couldn’t find it on the map and it wasn’t mentioned on the audio tour. I did ask one of the guards about it, and he tried to tell us that the BFG was only a fictional character and that there was no such place in Windsor Castle. We strongly suspect, however, that the Queen might be trying to protect the public from the inevitable panic that would ensue if it was discovered that giant lived in the middle of England.

We did find some other mythical characters; Here is a depiction of Saint George slaying the dragon:

And finally, we wandered the town a bit finding a cafe for hot cocoa and biscuits near the Thames River. There were dozens of swans and ducks who all swarmed around us, hoping for a snack of their own.