A Quiet Day in Windsor

[Wednesday, July 26, 2023]

The evenings at The Castle Hotel in Windsor are very quiet. The only noise that can be heard is from the squeaking of the old floors in our room.  Not only are they creaky, but they are uneven. So to get to the bed from the desk, you are traveling up hill. And, it's not a small amount of incline either, it's quite noticeable. As a matter of fact, there are a number of incline/declines in our room which means one has to be careful making one's way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Further, the bathroom is a full step up from room level. So, if you do not have your whit's about you when you come out from the loo, you could find yourself flat on you face on the floor, and then rolling to the middle of the room. 😐.

I woke up early again, and because I did not bring a watch of any kind (yes, my phone had the time but I had turned it off last night before going to bed), I'd be guessing when I say that it was probably about 3:30 AM local time when I woke up. Seems adapting to the time difference is taking more time that I had realized. It's a good thing the next leg of our journey is only two timezones ahead of where we are now, so it will be like flying from YEG to YYZ. Although it's quite a bit further south as the flight from Frankfurt to Nairobi is 9.5 hours. But, I'm getting  a little ahead of myself.

We had no concrete plans for today other than we had to check out of the hotel in Windsor and drive ourselves to the Heathrow area where we booked on night at the Radisson which is just a 10 minute Uber ride to our terminal. We had asked the front desk for some ideas on what we could do for the day, and they made a few suggestions that sounded appealing. With those items in mind, we first each grabbed a quick shower and then packed up our belongings so that we would be ready to leave. Breakfast was at the same place as the day before, Esquires Coffee. Good food and decent coffee. We both had cafe mocha's, mine was the decaffeinated version. Food is good here and the place has that cool-coffee-place vibe.

After breakfast, we went for a walk down one of the pedestrian roadways looking at things in the shops along the way. On our way back to the hotel to complete out checkout, we stopped at a Krispy Kreme that was open and shared one of their glazed doughnuts. Those things are deadly.

Back to the hotel for a bio break, and bring our luggage down to the front desk for checkout.  We took one last look around to make sure we didn't forget anything (or so we thought - more on that in a minute) and we exited the room. Since we had paid for parking at the hotel for the day, we could leave our car in their parking while we went and did a few more things. So, we took our suitcases/backpacks out to the car and loaded them in the boot. 

We were told that there were a couple Thames River cruises that would be worth our time to consider, so that is exactly what we decided to do. We walked down to the river's edge and arrived at the boat tour location about 20 minutes before the next cruise. We had stepped in line for a boat that was boarding passengers, but there was a lady with a clip board and she asked me if I was from GSK. I replied that I was not; to which she replied "Then you WILL NOT be joining us!"  Was it something I said?  Apparently this specific sailing was a group tour for the English GSK folks (big pharmaceutical company) so we would have to wait for another boat to arrive. One did arrive in just a matter of minutes, so we boarded and found a seat on the top deck, near the back of the boat. The trip lasted about 40 minutes (20 minutes each way) as it cruised up towards a set of locks at which point the ship's captain turned it around and headed back towards the pier where we were picked up. 

This would be like taking the River Queen in Edmonton up and then back on the North Saskatchewan river. Except this was in England and the Thames. As you can see in the photos there were a number of ducks, geese and swans around the docks as you can buy feed and provide it to the birds.  There were a few folks feeding the waterfowl, so they were congregating where the food was being provided.

One could also see a number of private residences along the river. I think it was the guy in the Krispy Kreme place who said, "Oh you are going to do a river cruise? You can see where the rich people live." We saw one river front property for sale and I overheard another passenger indicate that they looked up on line how much it was worth, and the number was just over 3 Million pound sterling. That would be about 5.1 million CAN. 👀.

While on the cruise, Laureen received a phone call from The Castle Hotel. It seems that some insane people left their passports, NEXUS Cards and the cash we brought for the entire trip in the safe in their room. 😟. They said they had the items at the front desk and we could just come and pick them up. We have NEVER done that before and are very thankful that we were not heading to the airport to leave. Imagine arriving at the airport and realizing that you had left all your ID travel items in the safe of the room you just checked out of? AHHHHHHHHH. So, when we were done with the boat tour, we went back to the hotel (where we were going to go back to anyway to pick up our car) and retrieved our stuff from the front desk. From now on, one of our shoes goes in the safe with our stuff!

We jumped in the car and were off to try and park near the middle of The Long Walk road where we were going to look to take a picture of the statue that is at the opposite end of it to Windsor Castle. There were two problems with this plan. First, the parking lot that we were told about was free - but also very popular - so we could not find a spot.  We drove around a little more and found some places where one might be able to park. This brings me to the second issue: It was over a 2KM walk from the parking spot to get to The Long Walk road. So, after a short deliberation, we changed our plan to head towards the Radisson, and stopped at a Costco which happened to be right along the way.

We walked around the store looking at all of the different items they had than what we have at our Costco's. If we were not limited for space in our luggage, I'm pretty sure we both would have picked up a few things. We had lunch at Costco sharing a piece of pizza and a strawberry sundae. Almost all their menu items are different than ours.

To round out the day, we decided to hit a nearby shopping mall called the Treaty Center and walk around and see what kinds of things were there. One store called "NEXT" had some pretty cute baby clothes (Oma had a hard time not stocking up). 

From here, we decided to head to the Radisson, check-in and drop off our luggage, and then return the rental. As we walked into the lobby, there was a whole bunch of people all sitting around waiting. It appears there was a flight that was cancelled and the folks were hanging around the hotel until other arrangements could be made. I think the same screaming child who sat in front of us from Calgary to London was in the lobby. 👀.

We checked in and proceeded to the room they provided only to find they had not given us the King bed we asked for.  Back to the lobby to sort things out, and move to a new room.

Once we dropped our bags in our room, it was back to the car to get it back to the rental place. A quick fill up with gas (the attendant was laughing at me when I came in to pay as he saw me looking for the option to pay at the pump). This specific gas station had an app that you could use - but nothing at the pump. 😐.

£20 to top it up. The Ford, Puma hybrid we were driving was getting just under 52 miles to the gallon. That was a fun car to drive (Stay left, Stay left, Stay left).

A short drive had us at the car rental place, dropping off our car earlier than we had scheduled with no issues. We ordered an Uber to take us back to the hotel where we shared a salad and a sandwich as our dinner.

Off to the room to get ready for sleep. We will need to leave here at about 5:30 AM tomorrow to get to Terminal 2 at Heathrow for our 1.5 hour flight to Frankfurt, where we change planes for our 9.5 hour flight to Nairobi. 

One more sleep before we touch down in Africa!

G'night all!

Curt & Laureen

UPDATE:

We were able to re-book our Windsor Castle tour for one of the days when we are back in London after the safari. There is a train that can take us from London to Windsor in about 30 minutes and when we are done, we can do the same thing in reverse. The folks who sell the Windsor Castle tickets were great about just changing our dates for the one we missed due to the flight delay we had coming in.