0200 This is the border of the city of Windsor and its castle. The statue is Queen Victoria and you can see the King Henry VIII Gate (between the two angled towers just up the wall a bit. It’s the exit from the castle. The entrance is about half way up just below the Round Tower at the right edge of the picture. You can barely see it but that’s the Queen’s flag atop the Round Tower’s flag pole.
0218 These are the public apartments where you can see Mary’s Doll House and all the state rooms used for ceremonies and formal meetings.
0220 This is the Queen’s Private Apartments. One guard is visible in his red coat and huge hat. The Queen is in there somewhere.
0226 This is the Round Tower looking back from the Lower Ward. That’s St George’s Chapel on the left and the buildings on the right are in the castle’s outer wall. As you can see the sun finally made an appearance.
0229 St George’s Chapel. Burial place of 10 monarchs.
0224 The front façade of St. George’s Chapel. This was taken in the AM when it was still cloudy. You can see how delicate the tracery is around the stained glass windows. Each of the 79 individual windows above the doors has the image of a saint. Very colorful. You can also see how delicate, by comparison, the flying buttresses are as well. The interior columns are also very slim and the clearstory windows are quite large. The church is quite bright inside as the result of the ration of glass to stone being large. Noticeably different from Medieval or early Gothic structures, much more open, light and airy.
May 10 – Southampton, England, UK. Today we would normally be disembarking to head to London and the Chunnel train but not this time. We are staying on the QM2 for 2 more days to go to Hamburg, Germany. This has given us the first time opportunity to take a shore excursion off the QM2. I wasn’t sure how that would go off a ship this large but they had it well organized and except for the fact that our guide to the bus went to the wrong bus went off smoothly.
We are heading to Windsor Castle, one of the few Royal Residences we haven’t visited. It’s about a 2 hour drive from Southampton to Windsor which is not bad through the rolling, very green English countryside. Windsor Castle is the largest inhabited castle in the world. The walls on the long side are about a mile in length. The oldest parts were constructed in the 1000s and it’s been added to ever since. Most of the buildings are from before 1400 but some of the interior rooms have been redone as late at 1823.
It has three sections, lower, middle and upper wards. The middle ward is where the castle began. The Round Tower, which ultimately became the castle’s keep (the final place to retreat to and mount a defense) was built by William the Conqueror in 1080 as a wooden structure. In 1170 Henry II rebuilt it in stone. Today the queen’s flag is flying atop it, a signal that she’s in residence. Our guide told us on the way up that she considers Windsor her home and the Buckingham Palace in London her office. She used to spend most weekends here but lately, being 87, she is spending more time here and only going to Buckingham 3 or 4 days a week.
Security here is just like the airport but you don’t have to take off your belt. There was quite a line up and we spent about 45 minutes of touring time waiting to get through the scanners.
You enter near the round tower, in about the middle of the castle. They give you a self-guiding audio tour that plays recording based on the number you enter. I was sorry to read that no photos are allowed inside the buildings. I guess the queen wants to sell tour books and we usually do buy one for interesting places but this trip volume and weight are prime problems so books are not on the agenda, they’re both bulky and heavy.
The guide leads you first to the edge of the dry moat around the Round Tower. The it takes you to the public rooms of the castle. It is decorated very lavishly but not as ornately as the French and Russian Palaces. To my eye, that’s a good thing.
The first thing we saw was Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. It’s a huge structure built on a 1:12 ratio, one inch = one foot. It was not built as a child’s toy but to show how a proper royal house of the early 1900s should be designed. The plumbing actually functions, they wine cellar has real wine, the furniture is exquisite. It has the cars, four of them, 2 Rolls Royce, a Bentley and a Jaguar, plus a motorcycle with side car and a truck. The servant’s quarters are Spartan and the family’s rooms are lavish. There was a large mob of girls from about 8 to 12 in the room and it was a little chaotic.
The State Apartments are used for official functions. The Waterloo chamber, one of the newest rooms, is a banquet hall. I used to be an open space between two of the castles curtain walls. In 1823 it was enclosed to make this large and long room. The table could probably seat 52 people very comfortably. Of course there’s the Queen’s Ballroom for dancing and the Audience Chamber for greeting guests. Most impressive is the Saint George Room. It’s here that the Order of the Garter meets. It’s the oldest order of Knights in the UK. The room is covered with small shield shaped carvings with the Knights of the Garter’s crests painted on them. Some of the carvings have been painted over in white. These were the crests of knights who broke the code they swear to upon being inducted and are expelled from the order. The white shields are reminder of their punishment to the current members.
All the above buildings are in the Upper ward. Also here are the Queen’s Private Apartments. They are across the square from the State Apartments and you can’t use any of the exits on that side of them. There’s a fence across the road that goes around the Round Tower that prevents you from entering the square from that end. You can look across at the Queen’s residence from that fence. There are several armed soldiers standing sentry over there just like they do at Buckingham Palace. Same uniform and everything.
The Middle Ward is mainly the Round Tower and its dry moat. The tower is not the Royal Archives and Photo Collection. It’s not open to the public.
The lower ward has the most important building in the castle, Saint George’s Chapel. It’s probably the best example and the highest point of late Gothic architecture in England. It’s a shame that I couldn’t take any pictures, it’s truly outstanding. The stained glass is remarkable. In the east wall over the entrance and in the west wall over the altar glass predominates. There’s so little masonry work that it appears very fragile. The figures depicted in these windows are saints from Biblical days and throughout the centuries. I would love to have a book on this church. Maybe I’ll get one online when we get home. Ten monarchs of England are buried here. Their crypts are ornately carved and the tops are finely carved figures of them at repose.
As you leave St. George’s you pass the entrance to the Albert Memorial Chapel. He was Queen Victoria’s consort and much beloved. The chapel was originally built in 1240 but was converted to a memorial to Albert in 1863. Queen Elizabeth’s mother, the Queen Mum, is interred here. Outside the entrance to St. George’s there’s a horseshoe shaped half-timbered building that looks very Tudor in construction. It serves as offices and residences for some of the employees today.
On finishing our tour of the castle we wanted to get some lunch before the drive back to Southampton. We had seen several cafes on our walk through the train station from the bus park so that’s where we headed. Food is much more reasonably priced here in Windsor than London. We had two panini, Diana had a large mocha and I had a large latte all for about 13 pounds. In London we’ve paid up to 8 pounds for just a mocha. Then it was back on the bus and the ride back to the ship. Again, security at the ship was pretty thorough. I didn’t take off my belt and it caused no problem. I’m bulky enough to carry quite a bit of metal through the scanner without setting it off, since the scanners measure relative changes in the magnetic field. The more the mass changes as you go through, the more metal you can have without setting it off. Actually going slow helps too because the relative difference changes more slowly and is less likely to set the machine off.
Since our four tablemates disembarked here we got some new ones, a German couple that got on here and will get off with us in Hamburg. They just wanted to try the QM2 out to see how they like it. They’ve sailed on Aida, similar to Carnival for the European market, several times a enjoyed it. Like Costa, Princess, HAL and others it’s also a subsidiary of Carnival Inc. You’ll remember if you’ve ever seen one Aida’s ships. They have a big smile painted across the hull at the bow with a large blue eye on each side. No matter what, the ship always looks happy.
Our entertainer was Philip Hitchcock, a magician. Because luggage when joining a ship is so limited, most magicians rely on the standard paper tearing, rope cutting, card and disappearing bottle tricks. I’m very happy to report that Philip was not in that category. Yes, he did lead off with the tearing up the newspaper trick but after that it was something different. He used a large artist’s tablet to draw a bowling ball. No one much applauded but when the bent the tablet into a U shape and a real bowling ball dropped out, it was pretty impressive. He performed other illusions that were departures from the norm and got a good response but his finale was the most unusual. Be brought out a large rubber balloon and a leaf blower. He used the leaf blower to inflate the balloon to about 7 feet in diameter. He began by swinging the balloon in a circle and bouncing it off the floor. Next thing you know he’s got his head inside and is hopping up and down to make the balloon yo-yo like a huge yellow head. As it’s bobbing up and down, he quickly pulls it on to his waist and then to his knees and with a final hop off the floor he’s entirely inside the balloon. He proceeds to hop up and down making the balloon bounce across the stage a few times. He then rips the balloon slightly at the top and sticks his head out without noticeably deflating it and continues hopping around with a huge yellow body. To end the stunt he pops the balloon and takes his bows. Everyone seemed to be very pleased with his show and he received enthusiastic applause. Somewhat unusual for a magician in my experience.
Tomorrow a day at sea and then we disembark in Hamburg. This trip we’re traveling so light that I doubt it will take me longer than an hour to repack. Wonderful.
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