Blogs from Windsor, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 2

The last few days have brought glorious weather to England, for which we are eternally grateful - days so far have been 17-19 degrees and sunny. But before that - a word on Frankfurt airport -its HUGE. We had to change planes there with a 1 hr 40 min switch-over between landing at one gate and taking off for London at another. Fine, right? WRONG! We ended up late getting off one plane, partially due to some disobedient passenger standing up when she should have been in her seat, leading to the us taxi-ing down the runway with pissed off cabin crew shouting into the intercom "SIT DOWN NOW!!!" ...so by the time we disembarked we had about 30 minutes before boarding the next flight....which just happened to be so far from the gate we landed ... read more

Thursday and our last full day in London and its going to be another perfect warm late summers day. Today we have a plan to visit Windsor Castle and get it ticked off the bucket list. Our previous trips to London have seen us staying either out the east side or south of London Bridge and too far away to make Windsor a day trip without leaving really early in the morning. From Brentford though we are just a stone’s throw away, so to speak. Actually it became a bit of a logistical nightmare to select a transport route to get to Windsor mainly because there was a slightly closer over ground railway station called Kew Bridge which Google wanted us to use yet there were infrequent services from there to take us to the line ... read more

Day 1 and 2 - Don't Go to Sleep We set off for England Tuesday afternoon. The trip took over 14 hours between the flight from SLO to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to London and then from the airport to Windsor. Michelle enjoyed the variety of in-flight movies. By the time we reached the hotel, it was 2PM, local time on Wednesday. We are staying at the Christopher Wren Hotel in Windsor, right on the Thames. Our room even looks out over the river. We checked in and tried to avoid sleeping until a reasonable time. Looking for something to eat, we stopped at the cafe across the street. The Chocolate Theater Cafe has over 25 different types of hot chocolate, including the American hot chocolate (with marshmallows), the penultimate hot chocolate, the ultimate hot ... read more

Geo: 51.48, -0.605995Since we wanted to save the major London landmarks until Andrew arrived on Sunday, we decided to take a train to Windsor Castle (the real one this time). We just missed the changing of the guard there (at 11), but did get ourselves on a 1 pm tour of the kitchen. We went through the State Apartments, which were partially being prepped for Garter Day that next Monday (which meant we couldn't see St. George's Chapel). It was kinda cool, though , to see the various table settings being readied for the fancy-schmancy dinner on Monday. The kitchen tour was really interesting, and well worth the additional £5. We got to go down into parts of the castle that weren't really known in modern times, until the fire in 1992. The actual kitchen itself ... read more

Andy says: So we’re now less than two weeks to go until the trip starts which is scary but amazing at the same time! I’ve spent the last couple of weeks sorting my life out so now most of my stuff is boxed up at my mum’s, the visa’s have been applied for, have now got my money sorted (I’m pretty much a Thai millionaire now) and I finish work this Friday. You would think – oh that’s good he’s given himself a week to get everything sorted before he leaves – well you’d be wrong because I decided to stick in a cheeky trip to Barcelona next week to watch the AC Milan game. Not the best idea in terms of finance or timings but I’ve always wanted to see a match at the Nou ... read more