Like I said, the first stop was Windsor. It was really cool the idea of being in an inhabited castle. This is the castle that the queen normally stays at on the weekends. It is the oldest inhabited castle in the world. I think that’s pretty cool. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend there, like we were running back to the bus to get there on time, but we did get to go through the big stuff, the state apartments and st george’s chapel. The castle was really beautiful and we got to see a little bit of a changing of the guard. I’m so used to seeing castles that are super old and that nobody has lived in for years and years. So it was quite a change to be walking through rooms and hearing how the queen holds various banquets and ceremonies there still today. But soon it was time to leave and we just had time to stop at a shop recommended by our guide to get a sandwich to eat on the way to our next stop – Stonehenge.
There was quite a bit of driving time between each of these stops. So it made up for having to get up early because we got to nap a bit on and off throughout the afternoon. But we did get to Stonehenge and it was very cool to see. We thought the 45 minutes we had there was going to be plenty of time to see it and then walk around the shop and café area, but that was not the case. I wound up spending so much time just staring at and listening to the different information on the audioguide and taking way too many pictures. So it was once again a rush back to the bus. But we made it back in time and we were soon off to the final stop of the day – Oxford.
It took even longer to get to oxford because there was an accident on the “motorway” so we had to take a different route. But we got to see a lot of the lovely English countryside and got an extended naptime so it wasn’t too bad. And we did finally arrive, though sadly not in time to see Christ church or whatever it’s called which is what the great hall in the harry potter movies was based on. No, we arrived after it had closed. Too bad. But we did get to see a couple of the other colleges, their quad area. Oxford isn’t just one university, one campus, it’s a collection of various colleges spread throughout the town and the students live in the college in their own room and there is also a dining service of some sort at each college I believe. It seems like a pretty neat place to go to school. But apparently there are 5 people applying for every place at the school so it’s pretty tough to get into it sounds like. The other things we saw were the library which has some agreement with English publishers to get a copy of every book they publish. That’s a lot of books. The quad area within the library building is where some of the exterior shots of Hogwarts castle in the harry potter movies were filmed. So that was pretty cool as well. Next to the library is the Radcliffe camera which is the reading room of the library. You can’t actually take the books home with you, but you can take them over to this reading room. We also saw a theatre of sorts I believe it was, though I guess it’s not really used for theatre events but more for concerts and ceremonies like graduations. And we got to see from the outside the room that they used for the hospital wing in the harry potter movies so I was also very excited by that.
Once all of that sightseeing was done we had some free time in the town and picked up some water and a little snack and then it was back to the bus and back to the city. We didn’t get dropped off right in front of our hotel, but we did get dropped off pretty close and we were even closer to the little store we found the day before so we decided to pick up some more muffins for breakfast the next couple of days as well as some food from their ready to go take out area for dinner. We spent the evening eating and using the internet a bit, though it was more expensive than we would have liked. Then it was off to bed so we could be rested up for a big day of sightseeing in London the following day.
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