Windsor

8:30? Now almost 9! The guy who queued in front of me had such a foul smell coming from him. Not a good start to the day. Mostly everyone is travelling in groups, not a lot of single travellors. But from my trip, I see surprisnigly more single women travellors.

I guess I can now distinguish what the Brits look like. They do have a distinct feature about them. I think it's the nose, and the overall shape of their heads.

It's not really rare to see an asian face in London. But not the most common thing either. You'd find more brown and defn less blacks. And I continue to ramble on what is so different here from the perspective of chinese canadian girl. The first natural reaction from their eyes would probably be, does she speak English? The next thought would be, is she a student here? Understandable nontheless.

I really like the idea of trafic lights here in London. How there are no dangly wires handing from all four corners where the roads are only 2 lanes wide to discourage public driving. Something rather strange about the traffic lights tho. It goes Red, Yellow, Green??? Why is that really necessary, would it be sorta like think before you speak, look before you go?

On another completly irrelevant note, the Value Added Tax is such a strange concept. Where the tax of goods are already included in the price of items. Really don't undertand.

So back to the tour. Really not impressed with the way tours are given in London. Or I wound up with an unexpectedly unlucky tour group.

Our tour guide, a softspoken elderly black gentleman around his mid fifties named Omar. Driver (hispanic) Tony.

Unlike the tours you go on in China. No intro, no hellos. Maybe this is how it's done here. But tourguides are suppose to be more outgoing no? and actually explain and tell stories about the places we are visitng. With the gazillion "ummm's" here and there, it became straining and unbearable to listen to him speak.

How are you expected to guide a tour when you are speaking into the front where no one is listening. Have you maybe heard of turning around and talking to your audience? Or would that make you way too uncomfortable.

Was able to pick up some bits and pieces of information here and there from the tour.
-So apparently Hyde Park area, the price of an average apartment would be around 20million £.
-South Kengsington area has tons of museums worth exploring.

After being on the road and being reminded that we are way too early for the Windsor Castle. It was astonishing that we had to wait in line for 1.5hrs to get into the admission entrance when all of our tickets were already paid for. Like WTH. If I bought an individual ticket and tried to get in without a group, would've been better off. This wouldn't have been such a big deal until our tour guide decided to tell us that we had an option of picking up an Audio guide or listen to him. Had I known he was not going to be doing any guiding, I would've picked up an audio guide. Had he not mentioned that we were way too early for the admission the 1.5 hour long line wait would be understandable.

2 words. luo suo.

So the windsor castle is the weekend getaway for the current queen of england. She normally stays in Buckingham palace on the weekdays and flys in to the castle on the weekdays. That day she was indeed in the castle.

Henry VIII had six wives and was burried in St.Georges Chapel with his 3rd wife (The only one able to produce a son for him). It was unfortunate the chapel was closed that day. But would not have had time to visit the entire place anyways. Statesmen Quarters were pretty impressive. Caught a lucky break watching the guards march out in the mornings. Managed to squeeze into the souvenir shops and buy an item. So the 3 Kings pub that we passed by (Charles I, Elvis Presley, Henry VIII), there was a connection. Charles was actually laid in the same tomb as Henry and his wife. But oh there's a 4th body in the tomb also. One of Queen Anne's child is also burried in there. (The lady who had many children all passing away at an early age)

The queue for the dollhouse was unfortunately way too long. And is it so much to ask for someone to take a decent picture?

Leaving the windsor castle, we passed by the Ascot race court where the royals and riches like to bid on horse races.