It’s almost embarrassing that I’ve never been to a castle before, being that I am a fantasy nerd. Windsor Castle was everything I could have wanted and we were lucky to visit on a beautiful, clear spring day.
Our tour guide was a gentle, theatrical man with a clear passion for English History. Occasionally he would tell us a fact about the queen that sounded like trivial propaganda such as: the Queen knows the names and breeds of all 100 horses in this stable (though she has had plenty of time to learn them). Learning all of the responsibilities of the Queen did not leave me feeling jealous of royalty.
The tour through the State Apartments was outstanding. There were a lot of interesting weapons that seemed to be either ceremonial or just incredibly unique. There was one sword that had a hilt that looked like it was ivory carved into a scene of dragons and the blade was a zig zag. I can’t think of many reasons why this would be practical, other than possibly that a straight sword would struggle to keep engaged. The rifles were less interesting but still decorative. I was shocked to find a very disturbing doom painting in one of the rooms. As a fan of occult and horror art I was surprised to see that the Queen owned something so… metal. Speaking of metal, did you know knights used to be small. I mean they were SMALL. We saw some armor that I’m certain I would have outgrown by age 12.
The Game of Thrones theme song permeated the air outside the castle. Windsor was more like a fantasy than anywhere else we had gone.
Stratford on the other hand was quaint and quiet. The town is cute and relatively flat, which made for easy walks. We stayed just down the street from the Royal Shakespeare Company. I once read a book by Antony Sher about preparing for the role of Richard III at RSC, so seeing the theatre made me geek out a bit.