"They're Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace, Christopher Robin went down with Alice".

Day1:  We are now confirmed KLM passengers. Best flight and food we have ever encountered travelling overseas - in economy.  (Having never travelled in first class or business class we can't comment there).  We decided to go right to Windsor after arriving since we wanted to visit the Queen and we heard she stays there now more often than at Buckingham Palace.  

    Windsor Castle

Turns out she is still up at Balmoral for the summer, but we are going to Scotland later so maybe we can have tea with her then.  In the meantime we have a very pleasant B & B in Windsor for our first night in England and tickets to see the Castle along with the Great Kitchen. When we arrived at the Castle for our pre booked tour of the kitchen we were told it was closed for a large banquet that night.  I did suggest that we could help peel the potatoes but apparently that was not even funny!  Lucky for us we were staying over and could get the first tickets the next morning. This turned out even better for us as we were the only two on that tour, along with two in training to give the tour.  After our first day's tour of the Castle we stopped at a little place for a nice cup of tea!  We are now really in England! 

    Cream tea for two

We feel really lucky to be at the Castle late in the afternoon as there are no tour bus loads full tourists.  We just walked right in to see Queen Mary's Dollhouse and then the state apartments.  Pretty cool place and with a good audio guide we learn as we go.  We were both pretty well toast by the time we got to tea (having been up for over 24 hours by then) but made ourselves carry on to find the train station and look after tomorrow's tickets before hitting a pub for fish and chips.  We weren't sure what kind of night we would have right under the approach for Heathrow airport but all was well - the landings and take offs seem to happen about every 2 minutes, but stop between 11pm and 6am.  After our tour of the Great Kitchen we had another very good cappuccino and bought our lunch to take with us at the fabulous Marks and Spencer's picnic lunch section.  We were sorry to see that they don't carry little cans of wine anymore.  

I am writing this on the train to Exeter where we will spend a couple of nights.  Lucky for us we got a train employee who spent lots of time with us yesterday proving to us that we would really save lots of £ if we bought a seniors rail card.  We save 1/3 off every ticket.  We love to travel by train but it's expensive and confusing in England with I lots of different train lines.  She has started us off on the right foot (feet) we think.  

We did see the changing of the guard for Christopher Robin fans, but unlike Buck House, it's done on smaller scale at Windsor Castle. Nice big band though (more men in the band than the guard!) and they marched through the town afterwards.  

    Changing Guard at Windsor Castle.

Not sure when we will be able upload this.  We don't think our friends in Exeter will have internet available.  Having a great time, wish you were all here with us!!!

Cheerio

Marion and Wendy