Day 2:
Up at six and had a cup of tea in the room before going down to breakfast. (Note to self: acquire giant mechanized orange-juicer.)
This morning was the driving tour of London, with stops at St. Paul’s and Buckingham. We were just in time to catch the very tail end of the Changing of the Guard, just as they were making their way back to the barracks. The bus dropped some of the group off back at the hotel, but we opted to stay aboard and visit Windsor. There was a little pasty shop nearby, so we took out some steak and ale pasties and ate them during our short lunch break before going up and into the castle. There wasn’t time to see absolutely everything, but we did go all the way around the outside and through the State Apartments, passing through the dollhouse, first. I have to say, the tastes of royalty can skew toward the gauche. Tacky, even. Other parts were lovely, though, in dark wood and deep red, with a minimum of gilt. (Sadly, photographs were not allowed inside.)
We loitered a bit in the hotel room after Windsor, then loitered a bit in Harrod’s until we were kicked out for closing. We replaced supper with tea at their tea room, and a slice of sticky toffee cake. The tea was served, naturally, in Wedgwood, surprisingly the same design as the Mother’s tea set at home.
And then we returned to the Queen’s Gate to crash, and I have to say, I’ve seldom crashed that hard.
