This trip brought to you buy super cheap airfare, no planning, and post-inauguration stress spending. England was the first May fare deal I saw, so I grabbed it back in February, fully determined to spend at least some time outside of London. I’ve been all over the UK, but when it comes to England – only London (and several times, at that).
When I go somewhere I’ve been before, Lazy Traveler Mode is unleashed. I do the absolute bare minimum of planning, pray the currency situation works out at the ATM for the small amount of cash I grab, and chaotically google stuff to do or flip through guidebooks in turbo mode on the plane. If it requires some carefully orchestrated reservation, forget it.
For some godforsaken reason, our flight leaves at 11pm (instead of something reasonable, like 7 or 8). I like landing at 8am so I can nap immediately upon landing. But no, no – we get in at 1pm and I am forced to do my very best to nap on the plane.
Unfortunately for me, I am seated in front of Miss Trans-Atlantic Window Opener, who keeps opening the window shade periodically to admire the view I guess? To blast us all with sunshine? For the thrill of searing out her own retinas?? Ma’am this is a redeye. Opening the shade when it’s sunny out but night at home ought to be a felony.
Despite the sabotage from this lady and a man whose alarm went off at 4:30 am (also a felony), I snagged some very uncomfortable sleep and we made it to a ✨ sunny and warm ✨ London. What is this? Why am I warm? I didn’t bring shorts or flops and I have regrets.
We’re spending the night in Windsor – it is both close to the airport and Has A Thing I Haven’t Seen Before in it: Windsor Castle. This was tops on Google’s list of things to check out around here, so top of my list it went, too.
Alas, Lazy Traveler’s tale continues here: she is oftentimes surprised. This time, it was because I couldn’t be bothered to learn more about Windsor Castle before I left. I figured – it’s a castle, currently partially used by the royal family, neat. How long could it take, an hour?
Wrong. Very wrong.
It towers over the small towns of Windsor & Eton. When I expressed my surprise to Rhett, he said “yeah isn’t it the biggest one or something?” Yep. It’s got over a thousand rooms. You want to budget at least 2 hours for your visit.
You get a little audio guide and are free to roam the State Apartments and St George’s chapel, which makes up a very small part of the castle. Have I mentioned that I love audio guides? Especially with a very tired and addled brain, there’s only so much sign-reading I can really absorb.
The castle has been here in some ever-growing form since the 11th century, and more recently part of it started on fire in the early 90s, so several of the rooms and artifacts in the State Apartments have been painstakingly restored.
The sun relentlessly beats down on us. I am not sure I am actually in England. I ponder whether or not I should have brought sunscreen (who brings that here?) and deeply look forward to my shower tonight. The ice cream vendors on site are making mad bank today, especially off groups of school kids on field trips (oh right, children in mobs exist outside of schools on weekdays). I witnessed a French child drop his ice cream and then get mocked ruthlessly by his friends. (Leave these friends, they are clearly your enemies)
Instead of ice creaming, we hydrate, and then we picked St George’s chapel first because why not? If I had bothered to learn even like 1 thing about this place before we left, it would be that Queen Elizabeth is interred here. Lots of people spent time visiting her final place of rest during our visit.
No photos allowed inside of course, so picture a nice gothic cathedral with arched ceilings and many gilded organs and altars and hey congrats, you’ve got St George’s. Or you can google the interior, too. Other items of note:
- A rll big sword belonging to King Edward. It’s over six feet long
- Lots of incredible carved wood dating back many centuries, with the crests of many knights sprinkled in
- The organ! So cool, so big, covered in gold
- The tomb of our boy Henry VIII, who was just the subject of a recent Sawbones podcast that discussed whether or not he had a TBI from jousting (is this why he had so many wives?) (I’m on team TBI)
The audio guide here is really aggressive about telling you you can worship and join in worship services in the church – every time it’s narrated by a clergymember, it gets dropped somewhere in their historic spiel. Worship. With. Us!!!!
We pass by the gardens and the wisteria is going absolutely ham. If we’d been here a week earlier, it looks like they have tulips and daffodils for days in the gardens.
Our other stop is the maze of rooms in the state apartments. Again, no pictures – boo! – but you can enjoy all kinds of treasures, portraits, and history of past monarchs who lived in the place.
My favorite is a room full of bedazzled stabbers and a golden tiger head that was removed from India under questionable circumstances at best (let’s be real, that is the story of many treasures owned by the British monarchy). I also learned that the King’s attendants and closest advisors back in the day would accompany him in the toilet and watch him go to bed & wake up at night. Creepy besties for life.
Oh yeah, the theme of this badly-planned trip is “cutesy towns etc” so of course, our hotel here is charming. We end up in an upgraded room, which has a nice big bed and a rather larger amount of space. Unfortunately because this is England and today is freakishly hot, the room is kinda stifling (even for me, a lizard woman) and there is no AC and no fan. We leave the door open til after sundown and this is sufficient enough.
We get dinner at a nearby restaurant and are woefully under dressed as we are both hitting the end of the afternoon tea crowd and also happen to be Americans in Europe. The prices weren’t bad and the food was good – both a win for me!
On the way home, I resist the siren songs of the used bookstores & antique map shops (for now) – I will pilfer them another day.
