London Week 6

This week we managed to get along to our first London Show. It wasn't in the West End, but it was just as grand and flashy. The show is called Wicked and it is basically the story of what you didn't know about the Wizard of Oz, focussing on it all from the point of view of the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North. We don't want to spoil the story any more of that, but it was certainly entertaining and at 20 pounds each it felt like a good value night out.

Saturday and we caught up with Tom and Gini again, on the train out to Windsor. Windsor was one of the highlights of the trip so far. It certainly helped that we had great weather. Things started off with a tour around Windsor Castle. After queueing and heading through metal detectors and x ray machines (just like at the airport) and then we were off. Windsor castle as a tourist attraction is really well done. You get an audio tour each which you can carry around with you and it tells you about all the different parts of the castle and their history. It was no Alcatraz and some of the speakers on the audiotour did tend to go on a bit long (including Price Charles) but overall it gave us a really good insight into the history of the castle. Windsor is also one of the places where the Queen spends her time and it hosts a number of formal royal functions. The chapel in the castle also serves as the burial place for many famous kings and queens. Henry VIII, Charles II and even the Queen Mother are all buried there.

After that we found a nice pub and dug into Steak and Guiness pie, mmmmm tasty and as it turns out very much needed. We decided we needed an after lunch walk, but before that we headed off to a shop that had been recommended to us, the Chocolate Theatre where we munched on our chocolate hedgehogs and bought some chocolate fishes to take away with us (not the marshmallow kind). Then we were off round the back of Windsor Castle for The Long Walk. The Long Walk is basically a path that runs 5km in a perfectly straight line from the back of the castle, through a park, and then out into some larger paddocks filled with deer to a HUGE statue of King George the III on the back of his horse. There were plenty of people sitting there resting before the big 5km back. After that we had burned all that pie out of our systems and were reading for a sleepy train ride back home again. A good day all round.

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