London – Day 6

We wake up again to a stunning day weather wise. Blue skies and by the end of the day it has become quite hot and our pasty white Scroop skin is now lathered in sunscreen. It sucks when as an Aussie you still have to put on sunscreen during the English Autumn! Earlier, Kris and I had set the alarm for 2am so we could get up and ring the vet back in Perth to check on Harvey. The vet lets us know that Harvey has improved slightly but is still very dehydrated and is still not eating but he has not deteriorated which is good news. We head back to bed and sleep in until around 7 when Mia and I do the Sainsbury run. After brekkie we get moving as we are off to see Windsor Castle (Her Majesty’s Royal Residence...or something like that). This involves a tube ride to Paddington Station and then a train ride to Windsor. Once we get to Paddington we have to head above ground to the main station to buy some tickets for the Paddington-Windsor leg. I am absolutely amazed at the size of this train station and this station is only one of many this size dedicated to domestic train travel from London. Purchasing tickets looks like a mission but it ends up being pain free with the automatic ticket machine. Finding out which platform to go to however proves a lot harder so we ask advice from a woman at the info desk. Lucky we did because she informs us that we need to make a change at Slough. We jump on the train that is sitting on the station and within 5 minutes we are on our way. I was expecting this journey to be about 40-45 minutes but I’m sure it only took about 15-20. We jump off and move to another platform and jump on the train to Windsor once it arrives. Now, we hadn’t researched Windsor Castle a great deal, it was kind of a last minute replacement for a visit to Warwick Castle which we had planned to do before leaving Australia but since being here we have realised that Warwick Castle was frickin miles away and we don’t think the kids were up for it. So anyway, as we round a bend on the train close to Windsor we see through the window this incredibly massive castle that seems to take up the entire view. We were blown away with its size. We pull into Windsor train station and I must say, prior to our arrival our expectation of visiting Windsor Castle was that there would be this big castle pretty much in the middle of nowhere, we would check it out, get back on the train and go home. Well bugger me we walk out of the train station smack bang into this amazing village-suburb. I later realise that Windsor shares its border with the town of Eton, famous for Eton College. The main shopping streets are like malls and would be at least the size of both Hay Street and Murray Street malls in Perth. There were shops and restaurants and people everywhere. And here I was worried before we left that if I needed to take a leak while we were visiting Windsor I’d have to do it behind a tree!! Dumb arse Aussie award goes to me it seems. We instantly love this place though; it has real character and is what we sort of expected from an English town. We grab some lunch before heading up to do the Windsor Castle tour. The tour ends up being a cracker, the history and the excessive lavishness and to the realisation that we walked in places and on carpet that the queen and many of the royal families before her had was pretty overwhelming. It’s something that is hard to explain unless you’ve done it. It ends up being a real highlight of the week. We finish the tour and decide we’d take a walk over to Eton (which is not very far, about 500m) to get a coffee. We stumble on this pretty swanky looking cafe. We walk in and realise within about a millisecond that we are not the rich clientele that usually frequents this joint. We hold firm though in our sweaty t-shirts, back pack, baseball caps and with the kids only half way through their Mr Whippy ice-creams to request a table outside on the terrace. We ditch the coffee and decide on a bottle of wine instead and it ends up being a pretty good arvo. We eventually make it back to the train station for our journey home which gets us there around 6ish. We shower up as quickly as we can to head out for dinner which happens to be back at Jamie’s Italian. Everyone agrees it has ended up being a pretty awesome day.

At Slough waiting for the train to Windsor

 

The swanky café in Eton on the River Thames

Kris doing the nightly coffee run on the way home from dinner

 

Covent Garden "Seven Dials".
Our apartment is about 40m down the road behind the dial, the pub is on the left corner. On the right corner just out of picture is the Cambridge Theatre which is showing Matilda and the coffee shop that Kris is in is directly behind me.