Day 3! Hyde Park + Windsor day trip

Saturday, March 23

Saturday’s plan was mostly a day trip to Windsor. We ended up staying up too late Friday night and probably still had some jet lag effects, so we were just slow and lazy Saturday morning.

Which was actually fine, since the main attraction in Windsor is the Windsor Castle, and it doesn’t take ALL day to see it.

Windsor isn’t too far outside of London, but would require 2 different trains to get there. The best option left from Paddington Station, on the other side of Hyde Park from us. We could have taken the underground, but it was a bit round about and it was a really nice morning.

I kind of wanted to see Hyde Park anyway (like their Central Park), so I suggested we walk the 1.7 miles or so from our apartment to Paddington Station. There were varying levels of enthusiasm about the idea, but we did it. 🙂

First though, we bought some baguettes at the Saturday farmer’s market happening right on our street! Like literally outside our door. Haha.

After sticking those back in the apartment, we set off. I actually quite enjoyed this walk… it was nice to see part of South Kensington.

We took a little shortcut past the Royal Albert Hall, a concert hall. (The domed building.) This red brick was pretty.

Hyde Park

We cut straight across the entire park from south to north. At the one end sits a huge memorial to Prince Albert!

It’s early yet, of course, so trees are not blooming yet. But some flowers and flowering trees are starting, so there were some pretty spots and the grass is way greener than at home.

This below is a memorial fountain to Princess Diana. I found it a little… understated, I guess, but okay. Like maybe she deserved something neater than just water in a concrete circular gutter-like thing? But maybe there’s symbolism I am missing. I guess she was known as the “People’s Princess”, right? Kind of an understated, “normal” person? I think? Anyway, it was nice, but not much to see.

We walked along the water for much of the time. Being Saturday morning, the park was SO busy with joggers, walkers, families and DOGS!!! Soooo many dogs everywhere.

Some flowers! None of those quite yet in Wisconsin.

This was a pretty spot:

A fountain in the Italian Garden on the north side:

We finally got across the park. I think by this point it was already after 12:00! Oops. We stopped for breakfast/lunch at a little place around the corner from the train station. I had a ham and cheese bagel sandwich, boys had smoothies and others had omelettes, etc. A nice casual local place, but took longer than expected!!! Just slow.

Anyway, got ourselves over to Paddington Station and found the platform for the train to Slough. From there we’d change to the Windsor-Eton train.

I had looked up the schedule and we made it just in time. (Slow lunch service was making me nervous we’d just miss and have to wait like 30 minutes for the next one…).

The trip itself and the train switch was easy and we were able to just tap in and tap out for payment with our phones, too. We had one little snafu where we didn’t realize that Asher’s Oyster card (with youth discount) did NOT work on the train. (I had read that, actually, but I forgot.) We worked it out at the station though.

Windsor

Windsor Castle is super close to the train station, practically right outside.

I was a little surprised to see it so close to the town! I guess I thought the whole thing would be enclosed behind gates or something.

Here’s a snippet of the town. We checked that out more, later.

This street was adorable!

We walked up the path to the main entrance after buying our tickets.

The views were really cool!

Also some pretty flowering trees!

It’s a very big castle! I have way more pics of the outside, because very limited photos were allowed inside, unfortunately. You all know this was killing me!! 🤣 But probably for the best, or the ridiculous number of pics in this post already would be even worse.

The castle tour comes with an audio guide, and is split into two parts- the State Apartments and St. George’s Chapel.

I was especially interested in the Chapel (I’ve seen it on TV many times (it’s where Harry and Meghan got married!) and it looked so beautiful and was a big reason I wanted to go to Windsor), so we headed there first.

Cool shots of the grounds:

Inside we really couldn’t take many pictures, so you’ll just have to mostly take my word that it was beautiful! There was some sort of (youth? college? orchestra preparing and then performing (casually- no big audience) which was a treat! The music background while we wandered around was nice.

The tombs of many famous royals are located here. Queen Elizabeth II’s tomb is here, in fact! It’s closely guarded for no photographs though.

Here’s the main thing I was waiting for!

What I didn’t know is that Henry VIII is buried under that floor!!! I don’t know why, but that really, really struck me. I mean, I guess I do know why- it’s THE Henry VIII? Right beneath my feet?! Also Jane Seymour and Charles I are buried under there. Just incredible!

There are a bunch of other famous royals buried here too, some more recent and others dating back to the 1400s!

After touring the Chapel, we saw the guards outside:

And then headed for the State apartments.

There was a LOT to see here! It took quite a long time. No photos!!!! Boo. But we got to see rooms built originally for King Charles II, and learn all about the various very famous people who wandered those hallways, the events held there, the uses for the rooms over the years and more.

I found the majority of this quite fascinating, maybe minus a few parts where they got into details of some of the paintings… but honestly even that is interesting in small doses. (All of the audio guide tracks were pretty short snippets!)

The rooms and halls and spaces were INCREDIBLE!

Not all members of our party were equally enthused about the castle, sadly. Not naming names, but someone whose name rhymes with “crasher” had an oddly bad “teenagery” attitude about it and opted to not listen to the audio guide. 🙄 He said it was boring and didn’t seem very interested in the castle or frankly, being there at all. There were just general attitude problems all around yesterday.

Ah, well. This is one of those things where arguing wastes my breath. I KNOW as he gets older he will realize the magnitude of how incredible it is to see all this stuff, and he’ll probably really regret blowing it off. 🤷‍♀️

He has some friends that barely travel at all, and it kind of sickens me to think that he may be taking these experiences, which we work really hard to prioritize for them, for granted, also.

Anyway! Back to the castle.

Outdoor space where horse drawn carriages would arrive:

A few pics from Ivan’s camera roll:

The town

We basically closed the castle down and were there until the end. We then set out to check out the town, another reason I wanted to visit Windsor.

It’s very cute, albeit very touristy!

We took a little detour off the main drag to go see the castle from the front and the Long Walk .

This is the Long Walk! We didn’t walk on it (it’s, as the name implies, long!) but it’s very pretty.

The Long Walk leads up to the castle gates, so we could see what visitors would have seen when calling on the royals.

My mom stayed back for a cup of tea (just didn’t feel like walking up a big hill on cobblestone and wanted tea, lol).

A few other sites around town (mostly lots of shops, restaurants, etc.)

We were very hungry, so we landed on a pizza place for dinner. It was cute, nice and warm inside, and really good!

After dinner we had to reverse the trip home, which took a bit longer due to a disruption of the train service. Apparently someone was hit by a train and died earlier in the day (!!! 😬) and there were some closures. Fortunately they opened an express train back to Paddington and we could get on that.

Back in London, we then had to take the tube back to South Kensington! It was all a lot of walking and my legs were tired by the end.

However, being the party animals that we are 😅, we again dropped the boys at the apartment and went back to the same pub we stopped at the night before. We didn’t stay super long- maybe 9:45 pm- 10:30? It’s a nice way to unwind and chat about the day.

Oh, I also love this quote on the wall, by Queen Victoria. “We will not have failure- only success and new learnings.”

P.S. I have to add this in because it made me laugh out loud… I was texting with my sister from the pub, and she sent me this of the Queen, taken at St. George’s…. lol!! The Queen… standing on a literal life sized chess board.. 😅

Another day in the books! Not without a few challenges, but overall, I thoroughly enjoyed (most) of the day, and the (majority) of our party did, too. 🙂