Highlights of the day: Windsor Castle
Tuesday June 11, 2019 – We were all fairly exhausted when we landed in Heathrow Terminal 2 at 5:55am, fully expecting to spend quite a bit of time de-planing from the United flight and going through customs. Since it was so early, the process went quickly. We were a family of five (two adults, three kids; 5, 9, 12) so the customs officials pulled us through a special line and we breezed right through.
I didn’t want to feel rushed when we arrived, so our driver from Windsor Cars wasn’t scheduled to arrive until 8am. Rather than waiting two hours, we called and they arrived 30 mins later. While we waited, Connor (12) and I worked our way toward the tube station to buy his child Octopus card. Danielle and I had already purchased our Visitor Octopus cards online. Kate (9) and Cohen (5) were free, so they would enter the tube stations with one of the adults through the handicapped entrances.
We met the driver and loaded up in the van for our short 20 min drive to Windsor (£34). The kids found it very cool that his driver’s seat was on the opposite side. He took us to the Mailboxes Etc. on St. Leonards Rd, which also doubles as a Stasher location. Windsor Castle would not allow our bags during the tour, so we had to find somewhere to “Stash” them. It was reasonably cheap, £6/bag. Even though the location wasn’t supposed to open until 9am, the store manager was already there at 8:30 and let us come in.
We had packed light, trying to minimize the amount of items we would have to drag through Europe for the next 2.5 weeks. Each of us had one carry-on (international sized, except for one that would create an issue later) and a backpack, except for Cohen (5) that only had a backpack. The lack of checked luggage and flying direct out of Chicago had kept our flight prices low ($510 each).
Windsor is very walk-able (I had to do some of it twice as I forgot our castle tickets in our stashed luggage and had to go back), but does have some elevation change throughout.
The castle didn’t open until 10am, so we needed to find something to do for the next 1.5 hours. Our Airbnb host had recommended a location for breakfast, Cote Brasserie, just on the other side of the river Thames. We walked there, greeting some ducks and swans along the way.
The coffee was good, and mandatory at this point.
We still had some time to kill, so we strolled down the streets of Eton. There wasn’t much to see, as most of the shops were still closed. Upon arrival to the castle, we were grateful that we had purchased our tickets online, as the ticket line wrapped around the building and out of sight. With our pre-purchased tickets, we walked past them and right in. The security inside was reminiscent of TSA.
The audio guides were included with the tickets and picked up after walking up the hill, just before entering the castle walls. There was a kid-friendly version that kept the children entertained. There were two main sections of the tour, the state apartments and St. George’s Chapel. We started with the state apartments, which had a separate queuing line of 15 mins. As is typical with most castles and palaces, there were no pictures allowed inside.
The chapel area had no queue and only took a few minutes to walk through, which was good because we wanted to see the changing of the guard at 11am (which actually started a little earlier than scheduled). Most tourists lined up near the chapel at the bottom of the hill and you can hear the band playing while walking up the hill outside of the castle wall. I started with a front row seat, but quickly realized that the areas behind and up the hill are just as good due to the elevation allowing you to see over everyone up front.
The spectacle took a while and we were fairly bored with it after about 25 mins, so we made our way out of the castle and across the street to our first of many souvenir shops. The kids were excited to buy things, because well… they’re kids I guess. Connor picked up a “Big Ben” (I know it is really the houses of parliament and Big Ben is really just the bell, but for simplicity sake in this article I’m going to refer to it as “Big Ben” anyway) and Kate got a stuffed animal with I “heart” London on it. Cohen was falling asleep at this point, so it was time to head toward the train to London.
We took the train from the Windsor and Eton Central station, which had a connection in Slough before connecting to London’s Paddington Station. We weren’t sure how to work the automated ticket booths, so we just went to the ticket booth and asked for a ticket to Paddington. Connor ran off to find a “facility” and almost missed our train. Most everyone took a quick cat nap during the train ride.
Our Airbnb was just down the street from the Bayswater and Queensway tube stations, which made it very easy to get around the city and access Hyde park. We were on a 2nd floor (1st floor in Europe) apartment just above the Moor and Hitch restaurant (which had great burgers, along with the aroma of mary jane in the air).
Bedtime came early our first night. No alarms were set for the morning. We ended the day with a glass of wine and off to dreamland.
Gleitz Well Traveled 