Royalty

Hi All

Hope you are all well & happy. We had a lovely weekend, despite a rainy Sunday. Friday night we went out for dinner in Soho with Amanda. Fantastic food, and so many people everywhere! We then headed back towards Covent Garden for some cocktails in one of the trendy bars there, and spent the evening lounging on a big sofa drinking "Hunk" Martini's (which are a lot sweeter than the real thing). Lots of fun.

Saturday, Richard & I headed out to Windsor Castle & spent a good couple of hours meandering through the castle, listening to our audio guide & taking heaps of photos. Very touristy. The Dolls house was absolutely incredible. It is a full mansion with teeny tiny rooms and teeny tiny furniture. Teeny tiny cars out the front and a teeny tiny wine rack in the basement. The banquet room has a full set of teeny tiny silver plates and cutlery, and the housemaid's closet even has a fully functional teeny tiny vacuum cleaner (about 5 cm high). The plumbing and electricity works, and even the library has walls lined with teeny tiny bound books. Apparently it was made as a gift for Queen Mary, and all of the master craftsmen of the time made something to go in there. Even the walls have teeny tiny replica's of master works of art. Check out the queen's bedroom on the left (keeping in mind that the whole room is no bigger than around 20cm2), and the "day" nursery on the right (there is another nursery for night time) with the minature toys! Incredible. (if you want to see more -> http://www.royal.gov.uk/output/page4488.asp)

Actually the whole castle was amazing. It is apparently the largest castle still in use in the world. Incredibly the public is allowed to see a huge amount of the castle. We saw the state apartments and the church and took heaps of photos (although you're not allowed to take photos inside the castle). Example pic on the right.

After spending hours in the castle we headed to the Long Walk (pic on the right),where some friends had kindly supplied heaps of food for a picnic. We spent the afternoon on the grass drinking champers and getting into some really good food. Lovely. We also saw a couple of weddings go past which was interesting to watch. Would be great to have the castle in the background of your wedding photos!!!

Sunday we headed up to St Neots for a BBQ with the PwC team, hosted by one of the directors in the team. His house was in a gorgeous village, which was having a scarecrow festival at the time. There were some really interesting scarecrows out the front of people's houses. Quite realistic! Unfortunately we didn't take our camera. It rained on and off for most of the afternoon, however that didn't stop the kids from using the bouncy castle & the rest of us spent a lovely afternoon chatting undercover.

Anyway, this week we're hoping to go to the Nottinghill cinema to see Moliere tomorrow night, and then on Saturday morning we're flying to Hungary for a week's holiday in Budapest. Should be fun :)

We've also just about finalised our round the world tickets, and it looks like we're going to have a few days in Brisbane in mid November, so will have to organise to catch up with everyone there!

Hope you're all well & happy! Have a great week :)