I forgot to mention: before I went to Wales, I went to Windsor. Tea with the queen and all that, you know.
(Oh, and as you can tell, I'm out of clever titles. Feel free to suggest some. I chased around a few cringe-worthy ideas involving knots, but even my punning abilities weren't up to the task.)
Windsor Castle is, according to their website, "the oldest and largest occupied castle in the world." It covers over 13 acres. The original structure was built between 1066 and 1080, though it wasn't used as a royal residence until Henry I (1110). Geoffrey Chaucer, who worked as a diplomat and Clerk of the King's Works by day and only moonlighted as "the Father of English Literature," was in charge of conducting major renovations on St. George's Chapel.
Interesting side note: The south transept of Westminster Cathedral is the famous "Poets' Corner." The first author to be buried here was Geoffrey Chaucer. The thing is, Chaucer wasn't buried there because of his poetry. He was buried there because of his work as a diplomat and clerk to the Crown. It was only later that people started remembering him only for his literature, and then started burying other famous authors in the transept. (Literature: more enduring than politics.)
I unfortunately couldn't take any pictures of the interior, but here are some photos of the outside of Windsor Castle:
Small changing of the guard, with overly-elaborate unlocking of a side gate. He was very, very precise about bending at a certain angle, and then waiting for the exact moment to turn the key.
For the rest of the castle, I'll be relying upon internet pictures.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Aerial view of Windsor Castle.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.
Giant side view.
Photo courtesy of http://aedesign.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/windsor-castle-st-georges-hall-bekrshire-united-kingdom/
This is St. George's Hall. It's incredible. My favorite part of the castle--except maybe the guardroom.
The guardroom is the room outside the queen's/king's chambers, where a bunch of weapons are put on display. It's a way of telling visitors "And these are only the decorations. You don't even want to think about what we have in the armory."
Photo courtesy of http://blog.travelpod.com/travel-photo/travellingross/1/1254431404/st-georges-hall.jpg/tpod.html
This is how the hall looks when they aren't having huge formal banquets. Notice the shields on the ceiling. Those are the coats of arms of every Knight of the Garter. If you're one of the staff members working in the hall during tourist hours, it is your job to have the name and location of every coat of arms memorized, so that people doing ancestral visits can at any moment come up to you and ask, "My great-grandfather was William Palmer. Where is his coat of arms?"
More interesting are the blank shields. Those are for degraded knights. If you commit some sort of heinous act (treason, promoting one of the failed marriages to Henry VIII, etc.), your coat of arms is left up there, but wiped blank, so that your shame will be known for generations to come.
Nearby Eton College, where William and Harry went to middle- and high-school.
Close-up of Eton.
So. Many. Swans. It was like this all the way up the river. All swans in the United Kingdom are property of Her Majesty, and as such, any harm done to them is a Crown offense.
