Windsor Castle is the only remaining castle left out of an original 9 castles that were built to protect London. These castles were spread out 20 miles away from the city center in every direction. They were perfectly 20 miles apart from each other, and 20 miles away from London. The reason for the 20 miles is because in that time 20 miles was considered how far an army could march in one day. That way if one ever got attacked in a days time reinforcements could be there to help.
I got to go into several areas of Windsor Castle that I was sadly not allowed to take pictures of. First we went into Queen Mary's Doll House... which was ridiculous!! It was given to her as a present when she was an adult, and was never meant for children to play with. It was known that she was found of dolls, so they thought it would be a nice present for her. The doll house is MASSIVE! I don't think my flat is even wide enough to display it. It's not extremely tall, but it WAS taller than me! It is an exact replica of the castle. With all of the rooms decorated and furnished exactly like the castle. Apparently the people that created the artwork, chairs, tables, etc... were asked to create mini-verisons of their work to the dolls house. The doll house even had about 5 or 6 models of expensive cars. It was really cool to see. And after the doll house was a series of dolls with the most EXPENSIVE play clothes you have ever seen. Those dolls were dressed as if they were princesses. Nyree and I just looked at each other in disbelief at how nice their clothing was... but I guess it shouldn't shock us too much.
Here is the keep of the castle. The keep is where people went to if the castle was ever attacked. It is surrounded by a ditch... which was meant to be a moat, but due to the fact that the earth surrounding the castle is made out of chalk the water would never hold, and would always disappear into the ground.
Now there is a pretty garden surrounding the keep. As pretty as the garden was the thing that made me the most excited i the castle was the art gallery. Now this isn't something I would normally say, because I'm not a huge art fan... BUT one of my favorite movies is Ever After with Drew Barrymore. In this movie they portray Leonardo Da Vinci as this super sweet wise man that paints a portrait of the girl that plays Cindrella. The whole point of the story is that this old Queen brings the Brothers Grim (who wrote almost all of the stories that our fairy tales are based off) and she tells them that she has a problem with the story they wrote about the little cinder girl. She then proceeds to point to this old painting, and begins to tell them this whole elaborate story about the life of her great great grandmother, and how she was actually the real cinderella. At the end of the story she has "The point, gentlemen... is that they lived." I always liked this movie, and imagine my surprise when I walked into this royal art gallery and saw a sketch that looked extremely familar. I did a doubled take, stopped, and stared at it for a while... and I was like "Oh my gosh!!!! That's the picture from Ever After!!!" Then I looked at the artist and wouldn't you know it was a Da Vinci! I think I might have hooted in excitement and jump in the air a little bit right then and there. I was sooo thrilled to have seen it. It was beyond awesome, and the sad part was I don't think anyone else caught the reference!! Apparently the royal crown own over 800 pieces of Da Vinci's earlier work, and rotates them daily! So I got really lucky!! I might not ever see it again... but I saw it that ONE time woohoo!
This is the city that surrounds the castle. You know back in the old days cities ususally developed around castles, because of all of the people that were needed to provide a castle with everything that it needed, and the castle could be used to defend people as well. Besides getting to see the Da Vinci sketch we also got really lucky, because the state apartments weren't supposed to be open the day that we went, and we actually got a discounted admission onto the tour because of it... but lucky us!! We got there and they were open. :) So I got to walk around the castle a bit. We weren't allowed to take any pictures inside of it though. The first room that we walked into was full of different types of armor. It was really impressive, and I looked around in it for a quite a bit. Another room had conquered treasures that Britain had won from previous battles/wars. Then there was a room that was full of different types of weapons, and the weapons were used as decorations in the room. It's hard to is describe without a picture, but the weapons were arraigned artistically. There was a series of about 100 pistals all with their barrels facing each other in a giant circle. And this was above racks and racks of different types of weapons. It was pretty impressive, and that was what it was designed to be. They say that ever person that was lead into the castle walked through this room so that they could see that the monarch they were about to met was well protected. If the person tried anything all of the king/queen's guards could rush out and grab a weapon. There was another room full of paintings of generals or leaders that fought in Waterloo and helped defeat Napoleon. Another impressive room was the banquet hall. This room is still used today, and it is cerimonial for knighting new knights into the King/Queen's services. The queen's chair is the most decorated, and has a giant canopy on the top of it to mark it as being regal.
Yes we were here at the right time to see the changing out of the guards!! Nyree and I didn't realize it at the time, but apparently while the cermony is going on you have to stay inside the castle grounds... well we were just walking along, and came to an archway and walked outside of it... we were immediately scorned and shooed to the side of the road... and these guards walked right past us! Opps! Who knew that the guards with machine guns were going to be walking through that archway in a few seconds!! Eep! I guess we must have given the guy watching the other side of the gate the slip or something by accident...
YES! I did do it! Haha!!! Now this wasn't on the bucket list, but it totally should have been!! I have ALWAYS wanted to get my picture taken next to one of these guys, and I was extremely disappointed when I went to Buckingham Palace in London and didn't see any of them. The ones at Buckingham Palace weren't even all wearing this traditional uniform! Hehe! I felt only slightly silly standing next to him taking a picture... people were lined up to do it too!! Poor kid haha. But I just couldn't pass up doing it! Even Nyree who doesn't like pictures being taken of herself went up to him and got one taken.
