Windsor - the cutest town!

ALERT - another long post FULL of pictures, and this time I mean FIFTY pictures

Sunday was a very full and exciting day, which had been planned days before: a visit to the town of Windsor *_* I had heard so much about this town, first from my dad who sometimes goes there for work, then from Isabela who lives nearby. Isabela offered to bring me there and we organised to go this Sunday, with her mum driving us there and then Isabela going straight home from there while I’d come back here on campus later on.

Therefore, the alarm went off at 8.15am and I went to wake Isabela up (since she never listens to alarms), but we ended up chatting in bed until 8.45. By then, we were in a rush because her mum was coming to pick us up at 9.30 and she still hadn’t finished packing. We managed to do everything, though, and we were in the car to Windsor on time! The car ride went very quickly, despite being one hour and half long, between chats and music.

We were dropped in Windsor at about 11 o’clock and we went to see the outside of the castle. Two adjectives I can find to describe it are: majestic and gorgeous. It was impressive and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of it from different angles :)

 

 

 

The next stop was the high street and the little open shopping centre, which is nothing like Westfield in its cuteness. I mean, it felt like being in one of those ancient train stations, which wasn’t that far from the truth since there was a station inside!

 

After the high street, Isabela took me to the main train station, then across the river Thames and we walked in these alleys where there was a bakery that I fell in love with despite not eating cakes... They made so many "Frozen" dessert *_*

Eventually, we reached Eton College, still on the other side of the Thames. Eton College is the most prestigious boarding school in England, where the princes went as well, and it takes up an enormous part of Windsor. Unfortunately, the College was closed to public, but I could still enjoy the view from the outside. I have no words to describe it properly, so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves and show how great it is. So jealous of the boys (it’s an only-boys school) who can go in such a beautiful college! We also went in the sports ground, a lovely park :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Around 12.30 we got back to the river and since there was a boat leaving for the tour we decided to buy tickets and board immediately. It turned out that we had the boat all to ourselves! I suppose that the cold and the time played in our favour, for that :) We had the advantage of being able to leave our bags on a chair without worrying and move around to take pictures without bothering anyone! The tour lasted about 40 minutes and it took us through Windsor on the river, with a voice explaining through speakers what we were seeing. We saw plenty of boat-houses, ducks and swans along the way and around us we had Eton College, Windsor itself and a huge racecourse centre, among other things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As soon as we got back, we stopped on the riverbank and we fed some ducks and swans with the swan food we had bought earlier on. Some of the ducks were very gentle and they ate from our hands gently and without hurting us at all! 

 

 

It was about 2 o’clock when we stopped for lunch near a Christmas fair, where I had traditional fish and chips for the second time since when I moved to London! During lunch, we talked about what we had seen so far and what we still had to see and then... then we looked up on Google some singing lessons for next semester *-* A quick explanation on this: I have always liked singing, but I never seriously thought of singing lessons before... however, on Saturday night on the bus Maria Stella was telling us about an acting workshop she is going to do in January and then Isabela and I started thinking of taking a Musical Theatre course! But we don’t have an basic signing knowledge, so we thought we’d go for singing lessons before. Anyway, at lunch in Windsor we found this great course at City Academy, starting on the 13^th of January! 

We finished lunch around 3pm and we went back towards the castle to visit the inside, but... guess what?? The last admission was at 3 o’clock and it was 3.15 when we arrived there :( Therefore we had to give up on seeing the inside and we started taking selfies with the castle itself!

 

 

 

Making our way around the castle, we found a parish church that looked very nice and warm, so we entered to warm up, but we also ended up visiting it properly as it was beautiful :) We also walked around for a while and looked at really nice streets!

 

 

Still disappointed about not being able to enter the castle, we went to the park in front of it where there is a veeeery long straight path that leads to it. It was amazing! I love that walk, because it looks so impressive and regal and it definitely shows that it’s leading to a royal palace!

 

 

When we left the park, there was still light and we wanted to wait for the dark to come so we could see the Christmas lights properly. In the wait, we decided to go back to the Christmas fair where there were some bumpers cars and have a go at them. On the round before us, there were a couple of cars with teenagers and we trusted there would be more when we started... instead there were only cars with children or parents with children and we had our reservations on hitting little ones... so I was like “Ok, Isabela I’ll teach you to drive instead” and we started normally making our way around the cars area. But children never do what you expect, do they? Some of them ganged up against us, noticing we didn’t want to hit them, and started hitting us very hard! After a while we gave up on avoiding them and we started taking revenge... but we didn’t manage to get back to a couple of little blond siblings because the time finished as we were nearing :(

By the end of our bumper cars ride it was dark and we could go back in town to see the decorations properly! There was a lovely fountain all lit up that looked amazing in the night, all the lights on the high street were even more spectacular and some images were projected on the castle (even thought his last part was not as impressive as I expected it to be after hearing my dad’s description)!

 

 

 

Around 5.15pm, we were picked up by Isabela’s mum and she drove me to Feltham railway station, so that I could get back home using only my Oyster card and not having to buy a train ticket. There I had to say goodbye to Isabela as well :( The trip took me about 1h30, first on a train then on the tube, and I spent part of it reading a manga version of Shakespear’s “The Twelth Night” and part of it resting. While I was on the train back home, I was thinking that it’s going to be very weird not having her around for a whole month, after living together for three! 

It was such a great day in Windsor, despite the cold :D