More of Henry VIII and the Queen-Windsor!

En route to Windsor Castle from the train station

Can you see the ferris wheel off in right of the shot? They had their own version of the London Eye.

Windsor Castle

The town of Windsor was really cute and quaint!

We were right in time for the Changing of the Guards at the Castle

On our way to the State Apartments and Queen Mary's Dollhouse (where inside we were not allowed to take photos). The Dollhouse was completed in 1924 for Queen Mary, wife of King George V. The dollhouse is at the scale of one inch to one foot and is over 3 feet tall. They had artists paint miniature paintings to scale, the manufactuers of the furniture in Windsor Castle made miniature furniture to match that in the castle, and authors such as J.M Barrie (Peter Pan) and Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book) even wrote special books that were written and bound in a size to scale. Even all of the wine bottles in the cellar were filled with the appropriate wines and spirits so that everything was completely realistic. They had a minature crown jewels too! It was pretty awesome and reminded me of the models I used to make (they always had that kind of precision and detail as well...not)

The building on the right is aptly named the Round Tower.

In some areas of the castle, the fortified walls surrounding the castle were 4 ft. wide... (I remember the audio guide saying that in the middle of all his medieval jargan).

St. George's Chapel (again, no photos inside) was constructed in the early 13th century. This is located in the Lower Ward of the Castle which is where the principal residence of Queen Elizabeth II is. This is the site of some of the most famous Royal weddings since 1863 and holds the remains/tombs of most of the most notable Kings and Queens in England's history since 1543 including- King Henry VIII, Queen Jane Seymour, and even Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (buried in 2002).

Outside the Castle gates in the town of Windsor

The Irish pub we ate lunch in

The Long Walk which leads away from the Castle to a statue of a horse (not sure what the statue is for). It's a 3 mile straight line walk to the statue and where the Windsor Half Marathon starts.

Yes, apparently he lived in Windsor (one of the most famous English architects-responsible for St. Paul's Cathedral)

Crossing the Thames means you are leaving the town of Windsor and entering the Town of Eton-home to Eton College which is basically the high school (their equivalent of high school is called college and our college is univeristy or uni) where all of the future Prime Minister's and the Royal families go.

Eton College and a few of it's members-yes, they wear coat tails as their everyday casual school wear and top hats occasionally too! (I know it's creepy to take pics of them, but I had to take pictures of high school kids in penguin suits...)

So Chloe and I met in Windsor at about 11 a.m. to take a tour of the castle and the surrounding area. Even though she only lives about 20 minutes from here, she had never been into the castle. The weather had of course said sunny-no clouds, but what we got was a mostly cloudy day (I put in pictures that weren't completely overcast), and it was extremely windy so we were freezing! I think this is what I can now look forward to weather wise in London as we go into Autumn.

Windsor Castle is the weekend residence of the current Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II. Along with Buckingham Palace and Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, they make up the principal official residences of the British monarchs.

The Castle itself is extremely large, and as it is still being lived in by members of the monarch, quite a bit of the castle is off limits. However, compared to Edinburgh Castle, the exhibits you are able to see are great (to be fair, Edinburgh Castle is a military defense fort while Windsor Castle was also a royal residence making it's interiors much more grand). You get to see Royal photographs from the official Royal photographer and as the Royal Library contains over 600 Leonardo Da Vinci drawings, they had some on exhibit in the Drawings Gallery. Next we went into the China Closet where some of the prettiest china I've ever seen was on display (of course it belonged to the Monarchy, so I didn't think they would have anything too shabby).

From the China Closet, we then entered the State Apartments. There was a fire that started in the Lantern Lobby(Queen's private chapel) on Novmeber 20, 1992 which destroyed 9 of the principal state rooms and destroyed over 100 others-this meant that 1/5 of the floor space (97,000 sq. ft) of the gigantic castle had been damaged. The restoration of these rooms was completed in 1997 (remarkable it was all done in 5 years and is was all very detailed and specialized work). Most of this restoration was funded by the monarch opening up to the public for the first time ever, the state rooms in Buckingham Palace.

After leaving the Castle, we ate lunch in an Irish pub and went to get coffee at a cute little coffee place in the shopping center which is also in the Windsor Central Train Station. We got the train at about 5 to make it back to London in time to find the photography social on the R.S. Hispaniola!