Tuesday, July 31, 2012

London 2012: Part 4

This is my last post for our London trip... I know you must be sad! ha!

Our last full day in London was one of my favorites. We took a train to the Windsor Castle. More than 500 people live and work in the Windsor Castle. That makes it the largest inhabited castle in the world. The Windsor Castle is a venue for hosting state visits and the Queen stays there over the weekends. We were there on a Sunday so the Queen was there when we were. Unfortunately we didn't get to see her but it was neat knowing she was there. 




Photo Credit: wikipedia 

This is the view of the whole castle. It is like a small city. It is HUGE!

One thing I loved about the castle is that it wasn't really old looking. Most of the castles we have been to haven't been lived in for century's. This one was very clean and looked fairly new... even though it wasn't.

We got to take a tour of the castle. Our first tour was of Queen Mary's Doll House. The Doll House was made in the 1920's and completed in 1924. The Doll House was given to Queen Mary as a gift from family. Artists and craftsmen contributed to the doll house. The plates in the dining room were made of real silver and the crowns were made of real diamonds. The pictures were all hand painted by artists. The house is over 3 feet tall. It was amazing!

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

After we saw the doll house, we visited a picture gallery of the queen in celebration of the Jubilee.

Then, we got to see the castle. We saw the dining room, meeting room (where the queen meets people), and a few other rooms. It was really neat!! No pictures were allowed inside the castle.


Cutest. Town. Ever!




This is where the Queen was!



This is the chapel and the Queen attended earlier that morning and if we would have gotten their earlier, we could have attended church with her!

We just had to get another picture with the guard.


After we left the Windsor Castle, we headed to Wimbledon to see the tennis courts and where the Olympics will be held. We walked around the entire town twice trying to find this thing. Finally we figured it out and got there and figured out it was closed. Oh well. It was neat to see it from the outside.

This little girl was eating up all the attention she was getting on the train.

After Wimbledon, we headed to a music exhibit where people could play all different kinds of instruments. This was Bryce's idea. He is the musician in the family. It was fun though. It took us forever to find a place to eat and we finally settled on Jimmy's World Grill. It was a buffet on crack. They had everything you could imagine. Just like any buffet, it wasn't that impressive. The dessert was good...that's about it.


After we ate, we headed back to our hotel to get packed up to leave early the next morning. On our way home, Bryce wanted to go to another castle that was about 30 minutes away. The castle was on the Rhine River and it was beautiful.

This little girl was so tired from our long trip.
 Beautiful drive to the castle!

Beautiful, right?


The Rhine River





This big girl was SO glad to be home!

5 comments:

Antoinette Musik said...

These photos are just fabulous!! London really is a wonderful city.
Oh and what a gorgeous family you have, your little girl is so pretty!

Between the lines

Unknown said...

Love Ava's t-shirt!

Andrea @ The Dawley Fam said...

oh my gosh, your pictures are gorgeous! I think I'm going to steal them! haha, just kidding of course! I just read your last post before this one =) And how awesome that Ava gets to be so worldly at such a young age!

Andrea @ The Dawley Fam said...

oh my gosh, your pictures are gorgeous! And how awesome that Ava is already so worldly as such a young age!

Andrea @ The Dawley Fam said...

And P.S. I might have commented like three times on accident, haha. The word verification at the bottom confused me and I thought it didn't go through =)