It has been a long day… But let me update things from yesterday afternoon first. I was planning to see Blue Man Group, but I neglected to buy a ticket until it was so late I would need to get a ticket direct from the theatre. And here was the problem. Yesterday my left heel was quite sore – I am assuming that I bruised the heel earlier in the day. Anyway, I decided that it probably was not in my best interest to go downtown when it was not certain that I would get tickets. So I stayed at Padington instead and went to the Abberdeen Steak House for dinner.

Frankly I was rather disappointed with the steak. It was ‘soggy’, and did not taste as good as I would have hoped. It was an experience I guess. The other thing I did last night was book todays tour of Bath, Windsor Castle and Stonehenge.

The bus picked me up from outside the Hilton a hundred metres away from my hotel about 7:30am and took me to Victoria bus depot where a heap of people who had been picked up by various busses got put onto their respective busses. We ended up leaving Victoria just before 9am, and went onto Windsor Castle. We actually parked in the carpark of the railway station which is what most people do. Windsor and Eton are just on opposite sides of the Thames River, making them effectively a single town.

Anyway we were shown into the castle, which was amazing. It is sited on the top of a hill, and has been built up above that. Apart from looking outside the castle the first thing we did was look at Queen Mary’s 1/16th scale dolls house. This is actually quite amazing, with working appliances and the like, but frankly I felt it was over-hyped. Following that the tour went into the castle itself with the state rooms.

No photos inside unfortunately, but I did get a DVD and Guide book. Quite amazing really. Just the sheer amount of decorations on the walls. Pistols, swords, everything. Seeing St Georges Hall and the room at the end of the hall that were almost destroyed by fire in 1992 was amazing. You could see how much work went into the rebuilding. And there were a few places where you could still see fire damage where they decided to clean the wood rather than replace it. Looking out the window towards the private apartments, you could see the Time Team trench.

Then onto St Georges Chapel. Once again, it is quite amazing. So many monarchs are buried here. It was going to be where Charles and Carmilla were going to get married, but eventually that deed was done in the guild hall just outside the gates. One of the stain glass windows just by the gift shop was for the centenary of federation in Australia.

After that I saw the changing of the guard, which once again was somewhat impressive. I just do not know how else to decribe it. Once that was over, I rejoined the bus for the trip to stonehenge. This went via Royal Ascot Racecourse, which is just a few miles from Windsor.

Stonehenge was good, but it was not as impressive as I thought it was going to be. It seemed somewhat smaller. I guess that has to do with late 20th and early 21st century architecture making an impression on me. I took tons of photos as will be seen soon. I can only guess what this would be like at sunset at the solstice.

Then onto a pub for lunch. I sat across from a woman whoes daughter was formerly with the Four Non Blondes which had one hit song a few years back.

The onto Bath. This was good, but our tour missed out on the Royal Avenue. It more concentrated on the Roman Baths. Once again I grabbed some great photos, and also some photos of the river and the outside of the Bath Church. We were given the chance to buy a glass of Bath water for 50p, but after hearing the list of ingredients as trace elements I declined. The Lead, Copper and other heavy metals did not sound good.

Coming back to london we had some heavy rain – the only rain during my entire time in the UK. This must be a record! When I got back to london it had not rained at all.