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Published: February 13th 2012
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Today we hopped on a train from London's Waterloo station and rode it to Windsor, so that we could explore Windsor Castle and catch a glimpse of the students at Eton College in their tailcoats.
Windsor Castle was, as expected, amazing! The castle is full of history and each room has a special story. It was really interesting to get to walk through a fully operating castle - the same place where the Queen spends weekends and entertains foreign heads of state. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, but we did get to walk through many rooms. Some are very old - dating back hundreds of years - while others are much newer. In 1992 a large fire spread through much of the castle and it cost over 35 million pounds to undergo restoration work. Some of the rooms were returned to their original state, while others were redesigned to incorporate more modern architecture.
The formal dining room in the castle was one of the rooms destroyed by the fire and restored in a modern way. Of course, modern in a regal sense is very different than modern in a commoner sense. The new
ceiling is reinforced with steel (in case there is another fire!), but is deocrated with much very fancy woodwork. The ceiling is divided into hundreds of square panels, each one containing a crest. Each crest is the crest of a knight. Some of the crests have been blanked over with plain white to bring shame to the knight to whom the crest belongs. These are knights that have somehow betrayed the monarchy.
One of the highlights of the visit was definitely seeing Queen Mary's Dollhouse, which was built in the early twentieth century as a gift to the Queen from her niece. The dollhouse is incredibly detailed and intricate (it was never intended to be played with!) and has models of vintage cars and gas pumps in the basement, a grand marble staircase in the entry, an electric vaccum in the maid's closet and real silver plates (made from solid silver!) in the dining room.
After we explored the castle itself, we ducked into the onsite cathedral. This is a very important church in recent times, as it is where King George VI and the Queen Mum are buried. One thing we didn't realize until we visited was
The Mot, Keep and Gardens in the Dry Moat
Look carefully at the fountain... it was cold! that the Queen Mum died a full 50 years after King George VI. Queen Elizabeth II apparently visits the grave of her father a few times each year.
We finished up in the castle around 4pm and thought that we would walk over to Eton College. Since it was so late, we thought we would have missed all of the boys (thinking that they would have long gone home for the weekend), but as it turned out, we got there just in time for them to stream out of the school. It's quite funny to see all these boys dressed in matching three piece suits with tailcoats, running and playing through the playground.
As you would expect, Eton College is pretty expensive. Students pay £10,000 per 'half' and there are three 'halfs' per year. (I guess Eton College doesn't specialize in fractions!) So, students pay £30,000 per year in tuition. (Although I also heard that half of all students pay no tuition at all, because they come from 'lower income' families.)
After a walk through Eton we hopped on the train and headed home to London. All in all, a very nice day! We are going to
The Advantage to Winter Travelling
No Lines! We actually had to stop and wait for the audio guide to catch up to us... we certainly didn't have hours to wait in line! spend the rest of the weekend in London, so this is really our first weekend without any serious travelling since we left Canada!
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Donna
non-member comment
Hello there
Touring Windsor Castle with you is such a pleasant break from my Instructor Ed course development tasks. My favourite thing was how they "whited out" the betrayer knight crests on the new ceiling - maybe a crossword puzzle hangover from my course building activities! My husband (another Chris) likes that the rich are subsidizing talented kids to go to Eton. How go your respective studies and work activities in London? Best, dd