Greenwich and Windsor Castle

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A couple of days in London

Well the Fab 4 have been split up. Georgia headed back to Australia not long after we got back to London, but Amy and Gav stayed on for a wee while so we decided to check out some of the sights of London. We met up at my place and wandered up past St Pauls to the Thames River bank. We followed the river up to the Embankment and caught one of the River boats that took us to Greenwich. It was such a sunny day and we were all really tired after the tour so it was nice to sit back and relax. Once we got to Greenwich we walked past the University and up through Greenwich Park. We wandered by the National Maritime Museum and had a look inside the Queen's House. Then we walked up to the Royal Observatory.

The Royal Observatory is the home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian line. It was founded in 1675 and is the official starting point for each new day, year and millennium. Of course we all had to get the obligatory shot and stood over the date line. It was a really interesting place and definitely worth a look.

We then meandered around the park some more where we spotted a number of squirrels and gradually got back to the boat for the trip back. We stopped back at my place for a rest then headed off to one of my favourite bars/restaurants near my place. It is a Japanese Bar called Fluid which has very funky music and decor and great Japanese food. Amy had been craving edamame all day so she tucked into a big bowl of it. We all had a couple of cocktails but as Gav had to take off to Birmingham the next day we didn't have too late a one.

The next day it was just me and Amy so we headed off to see Windsor Castle. Yet again we were blessed with another sunny day. We've seen so many grand buildings in the last few weeks, but Windsor Castle is definitely up there! It's still the official residence of the Queen and is said to be the largest inhabited castle in the world. The grounds are beautiful and I'd love to have been able to go sit on them with a picnic and just enjoy the day. Unfortunately I had to keep off, but they were good to look at.

We both hired a headset and wandered around the State Apartments which are furnished with great paintings by Holbein and Rubens amongs other, plus lots of tapestries, sculptors and suites of amours. I especially loved visiting Queen Mary's dolls house which I remember from when I was a kid. It has working lighting, fully furnished rooms and even a lawn-mower for the garden :-) When I was a kid I had a dolls house that I used to put my pet ferret in. He would have loved Queen Mary's house!

After a full afternoon at the Castle, we walked back through Windsor to our train. It was our last night together as Amy was flying back home the next morning. We went out for a quiet dinner before heading home so she could pack. It was very sad saying goodbye the next day.

A couple of weeks later I was very pleased to get a call from El Dirte. He and Kirsty had been travelling around Ireland and were back in London for a couple of days before flying back to Aus. I went and had lunch with him and met his sister. We had a wander around Borough Market which is London's older market. It has great atmosphere there although it does get really crowded. The El Dirte's flew out the next day, so it was yet another goodbye.

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Photos

Heading to St Pauls
My place is the red building on the left