The Abode Of The Queen

Last weekend was a long weekend as the humankind chose to commemorate the achievements of the labour movement. Simply put ....May Day holiday. S and I decided to spend one of those days in a place of historic importance. Windsor Castle was the closest and the most practicable option.

Anybody living in the United Kingdom would be aware even in the deep slumber state of the following fact. Getting hold of a parking space for their car in any public place in UK is a nightmare. So to beat this, we left for the Castle much before a British(er) would wake up on a holiday. That was around 9:00 in the morning. The roads of Windsor looked deserted and we were bestowed upon with the rarest of the privileges of getting to choose a suitable parking slot for our car, amidst hundreds of vacant slots.

We had a couple of tens of minutes at our disposal before the Castle was going to be opened for public view. We expended those minutes on the banks of river Thames while my daughter was becharmed by the ducks and swans in the river. Those were comparable to my daughter in size and were a delightful source of entertainment to her twinkling eyes.

Finally the gates of the Castle gave way for its visitors. The enormity of the building(s) and its surrounding open space would leave anyone gaping and gasping for breath. Throughout our tour of the Castle, we were provided with a “walkie talkie kind of thing” with key pad on it. Each key in the key pad unfolded the description and specialities of a particular area of the Castle through an audio clip. To this day, the Castle is one of the official residences of the Queen.

One of the wonders of the castle is the “Doll House” . This doll house has been created for the queen Mary as a gift by her husband. Whether it was originally intended to be a display of affection of a husband to his wife or was it more of an effort to leave its onlookers flabbergasted, is for its visitors to ruminate.

The Doll House has magnificent collection of miniature items , figurines and art pieces. In fact there was a miniature replication of the castle itself. One could estimate the amount of efforts, time and skill that has gone towards the creation of these exquisite items from the extent of details that has been brought out on them. Awesome is one word that could describe them. Every piece of display item, starting from the carpets to the flower vase to the functional flushable toilet were identical to their original counterparts, except that they were reduced in size of the order of 1:12.

As we moved on to the State Apartments, we got to witness some of the finest pieces of art and collections belonging to the Royals. The resplendence and the sumptuousness of the palace was a testimony of sheer power and wealth that they held, once upon a time. A great portion of them were the acquired wealth obtained as and when the empire colonised and took over the other parts of the world. One of them worth mentioning is Tippu Sultan’s gold Tiger’s head. If only our fore fathers had been united in India a few centuries back, we would have had the opportunity of boasting the ownership of such marvels today.

People who are interested in the complete details of the collection please visit:
http://www.royalcollection.org.uk/eGallery/

As we moved on, we wondered about the workmanship of silver furniture, stunning chandeliers, ceilings covered with elegant drawings, wooden carvings transformed into architectural wonders that have touched unspoken horizons of perfection. The grandeur of every section of the palace, be it the State Dining room or the audience chamber or the drawing room makes us think if this is the closest representation of heaven.

It was a visual treat in the truest sense. Once out of the Castle I came to my senses that there were 2 more people who had accompanied me and at that moment I was incognisant of their whereabouts.

OOOOOOOO..

I could spot S distantly carrying our little one on his shoulders as she had fallen asleep hours before (and obviously had refused to get into the pram). The rest of the day got spent tending to S’s back pain and my little one’s crankiness due to lack of undisturbed sleep. Is this what people call as “paying the price???”.