We went to Windsor Castle today. I hadn’t written about going to Farmer Gow’s Farm, but I won’t do that here either. I will jot down some notes about our trip today. We were going to start off at 8:30, but Faith woke up at 5 or 5:30 and wouldn’t go back to sleep. She’s been sick, but it wasn’t exactly that. We took her into our bedroom downstairs, and she wanted to talk and play. As a result, after we let her get up around 8 when the other children got up, and we went back to sleep. We left around 10:15, and made amazingly good connectoins, which we needed to do. We arrived at the bus stop on Woodstock Road literally seconds before the 300 bus; Dad jogged ahead to buy railroad tickets and we got onto the 11:00 train just in time, and got the last few seats, scattered here and there. The castle was very close to the station, and we liked seeing the keep and the state apartment paintings especially. Dad liked the Waterloo dining room, with its amazing arrangement of portraits and light, and the Holbeins and Rembrandts. We had to rush through because of toilet and tiredness limitations, alas.
The St. George Chapel was grand too, and the weather was warm– around 50– if windy. We had tea (tea, coffee, milkshakes, eggs and chips) at the Drury House, a 17th century building. We went shopping at the Edinburgh wool shop afterwards, and had another adventure–losing Holminy, who when everyone else was upstairs lost track of us and went back to the station. She came back to the shop later, though, finding it again with some effort, and most of the kids and Mama were there. Dad and Faith returned shortly from the station where they’d been looking.
Then we did an hour’s shopping, visited an art gallery and a cosmetics shop and a Waitrose to buy tissues and Christmas cracker. We chose Wagamama, a Japanese noodle house, over Cafe Rouge, a French restaurant chain, and then took the train back and two taxis to home.