Day 16 - London -Tuesday (still a Jubilee Holiday)

Cloudy bright in the AM with steady rain in the PM 10

Windsor Castle

 The day started early for me and I went down to the Executive Lounge to test out the Internet and food selections that are available to folks who pay for that access. The Internet in the room was priced at £15  per day. This is my only serious complaint about the Marriott chain. They have a 90's view on Internet access and only make WIFI available in restricted locations that generate $£€. It is not a current view of ubiquitous Internet. (rant over).   However, I do enjoy the heated towels and the heated mirror that removes steam when you shower and the great beds and 3000 thread sheets and pillow cases.  they also excel in customer service wen dealing ith the staff.

We enjoyed the breakfast fare that was very close to the fare that was available in the Mayfair in Copenhagen. Lucy and Freddi joined me for breakfast before we decided to make the trek to Windsor Castle. We had talked about it the day before but did not do enough homework to find out that we could purchase our entry tickets on-line. We checked for directions for the bus to Paddington Station and the Great Western train to Slough and then another train to Windsor and Eaton. All of that took us about an hour as the city was closed off for the Queen's procession to St. Paul's Cathedral for the holiday church service. We watched some of the preamble before we left the hotel. The transit went easily using the Oyster card for the bus portion and cash for the train portion. £6.25 (pp) I snoozed a little on the first train as it was about 30 minutes or so.

The Central Courtyard of the Apartments

We arrived at the village of Windsor and wandered through the town to the Windsor Castle entrance where we found a queue for payment of entrance. Prepaid entrances were allowed access straight away. We waited in the queue for about one hour with a rowdy set of children behind us. Finally we got to the wicket and purchased our ticket at about 12:30. £15.50 each   Lesson learned -actually two lessons learned - pre-purchase tickets and start earlier in the day. We toured the grounds, the Queen's Dollhouse, the apartments, the photo gallery and then we were back to the grounds with a couple of gift options presented to us. No photographs are allowed inside the castle and that proved to be an inconvenience as we had had free access with photographs in so many other castles. So I took them in my head and made the best of the tour with the audio sets thy provided.  The audio was very informative and regulated the flow of people through the rooms.

Outside we searched out a spot for a bite to eat. We found a little place that normally had an outdoor setting but it was raining and cool so we ate inside. The ladies had soup and brushetta and fries and I had one of their specials of avocado and bree cheese baked in an oven. All was very good in the fine little old restaurant with its timber frame and angles that were not square. The service was efficient and abrupt in typical English fashion.  We mailed our postcards from the Castle to get their seal of the British Post in Windsor.

Jubilee Tuesday in London

We returned to London after an uneasy wait for the Slough train. Some people are very rude and insist on stepping to the front of the queue even when there is an orderly line created. We all managed to get into the two small cars of the train and things dissipated quite a bit from Slough to Paddington Station. The bus was easier to find than I expected but the construction around the station had changed all of the routes. There is a great deal of construction in London. Once in the hotel I went to Selfridge to purchase a white wine for our room. The wine selection was small in my price range but fairly significant in the exclusive range. I did see a bottle that exceeded £3k. I left that on the shelf. I naturally went to the second floor to inspect the shirts line and decided to leave all of them right where they were. There were no bargains to be had in that area. On my way out I inspected the watch collections of which there we many. The average watch was ably £ 5k and the most expensive one that I saw was £ 38k (somewhere around $45k CDN). That's right and with that I would expect my watch to tele-transport me to work.

We then went to the hotel restaurant for dinner as we were a bit tired and it was late (8 PM by the time we realized it). Dinner was nice with lamb chops and sole the selections of our table. Freddi and I had the Corgi cocktail drinks so she could get a stuffed corgi as a souvenir of the Jubilee. The drinks were very refreshing ...... The dinner was great and we tired shortly there after as it had been a walking day and we were all tired.