Windsor Castle

Inner courtyard

We paid a visit to Windsor Castle, whilst the Queen wasn't there.  We did a tour of the kitchens at the same time, which was definitely worth the cost of admission.

If you are going, I would highly recommend buying your tickets online beforehand.  The line to get in was completely insane, it stretched all the way down the street.  Not how I want to be spending my weekend.  But having bought ours beforehand, it was straight in, nice.

We also discovered that Windsor is the place to go if you want to visit Legoland, which is an amusement park, I'm guessing where everything is made out of lego?  Anyway, it seemed really popular with the kids on the train.

St George's chapel

It's a nice day out, visiting Windsor, there is a whole town around the castle, and it's also where Eton is, which I didn't appreciate.  I guess it makes it easy for the grandkids to visit their grandparents, having the school in the same town as the castle.

There is quite a lot to see, even without doing the tour.  There is one main entrance, into the State Apartments, you can either go in via Queen Mary's dollhouse, and then onto the apartments, or just start straight with the apartments.  I would recommend the second option, you can always go back in and see the doll house later in the afternoon, when there isn't a massive crowd.  It took us maybe 40 minutes to be let in.  And then the only thing extra you get to see is this dollhouse.  Granted it is massive and very elaborate, but it's not really what you come to Windsor Castle for.  So go in the door with no line, and come back around later.

Unfortunately there were no photos allowed inside, I hate it when they make those rules.  So you aren't going to be able to see what anything looked like.  The state apartments were very grand, as you would expect.  There was a painting exhibition on whilst we were there.  The only thing that made it a bit special was that all the paintings had been done by members of the royal family.  They were surprisingly good, there were some nice ones of the Scottish mountains.  You don't necessarily pick the royals as being artistic, but I suppose they have to do something with their time.