Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

We actually managed to have everyone (including teenagers) up and out the door by 8:14:59 this morning! (one second before our 8:15 deadline) Thanks to Matt's navigational skills, we made our way through the maze of buses, subways and trains to Windsor.

We started our tour of Windsor Castle with St. George's Chapel - I love how the "chapels" here are bigger than most churches! - and then had the opportunity to witness the fanfare of the changing of the guard. It's similar to Buckingham but with a much smaller crowd! We had a front row view of the event. Afterwards, we finished our tour of the state apartments, Queen Mary's dollhouse (very unique indeed) and the castle grounds. I'm still marveling at the fact that it is over one thousand years old! According to the flag flying over the Round Tower, Queen Elizabeth was in residence, but we didn't catch any glimpses of her.

We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the grounds before hiking over to Eton College. I hadn't realized that Eton College has been educating boys for 569 years! We had the opportunity to sit in the original classroom during our tour. As well, we saw another "chapel" which is really a huge Gothic style church with many similarities to St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

All day we had managed to escape the on again off again rain until we left the college. Our last stop was a welcome shelter from the cold rain. We ended our very civilized day in the country with high tea. The hot tea, fresh scones, clotted cream (tastes better than it sounds) and jam were the perfect thing to take away the chilblains!

One more stop at Waitrose (finally a REAL grocery store) for some supplies and we were on our way back to Brentford.

It's hard to believe that tomorrow is our last full day of touring London. It's do or die. We've sent the kids to bed early in hopes that they'll be up and ready to go first thing again tomorrow. We still have so much left to do!