Monday evening in Windsor

Monday night I took the train to Slough again to meet David after work. This time we didn't go to Italy, but to nearby Windsor to see horse races! David's work offered group discounts and several of his coworkers went as well. It was good fun.

Even when I'm just going from Oxford to Slough, I sure enjoy riding trains in Europe. The scenery was so pretty - gentle rivers, hikers on paths through fields, swans and geese, villages with stone churches, and all kinds of good English stuff. So it was a nice time, despite the fact that the train smelled like pee and there was a very talkative toddler behind me.

I changed trains in Reading (with some assistance from David via cell phone). At the Slough station I went straight to the platform that goes to Windsor, and David met me there about 15 minutes later. The dress code for the races was business casual all the way up to dressy, so we both looked a little bit nicer than usual.

I was so impressed with Windsor! (David has been there once before on a work evening.) It's such a pretty little town, and it's the home of Windsor Castle as well as Eton College, the high school of the princes and other posh Brits. The train station has just one dead-end track, and goes right into a really nice open-air shopping center. They had an old train engine called "The Queen" in the station.


David with the old train; view of Windsor from the train station.

We headed downhill past the castle to the river, where we stood in line for a water taxi. Like Venice, only with English scenery! There was quite a long line for the boat, but the waiting area couldn't have been more pleasant. The line was right alongside the river, which I could look down into over a short stone wall. It was full of ducks, geese, and Her Majesty's own swans. Across the river were quaint boathouses and other buildings. The weather was perfect - mid-70s maybe, with a breeze and in the shade.





The water taxi itself was two stories, complete with a bar and bathrooms in the lower deck. It took us up the river, not very far but quite slowly, to the race course. Sadly, our races weren't at the Royal Ascot course as I had initially thought, but at the Royal Windsor. (Yes, that tiny town has two racecourses!) It was still nice, though, and an interesting experience.

We met up with David's coworkers occasionally, and finally tried betting on two of the later races. (There were six races, one every half-hour.) We chose horses based on their name and how they looked (you could check them out as they warmed up before the race), and lost every time. Humph.



We generally couldn't see much of the race, but at one point we did stand next to a fence where they ran right by us. That was quite cool - the horses were all so beautiful and the sound of all their hooves pounding the ground is great. Most of the time, we watched the races on one of the big screen TVs they had set up at various places.

There were various food stands set up similar to a fair, and we had Thai noodles for dinner. They looked a little dodgy but were pretty decent. I only ate about half of mine and planned to supplement with chips (i.e. fries) but never got around to it.


Dinner of noodles; our increasingly wet dining area.

The people who came to the races weren't all as posh as the ones who go to the famous Royal Ascot, but several did dress in their best and some ladies wore the traditional crazy feather hats. There was a ladies' best dressed contest at the end, and David snapped a photo of some of the contestents waiting beforehand.

We went back to the Windsor train station at about 9, but had to wait a half-hour for the next train. The train ride to Slough took less than 10 minutes, and then we took Wilma home from there. The weather had gradually been worsening throughout the evening (it sprinked a couple times at the races and I was glad I brought my trench coat when it got windy), and it absolutely poured for most of the drive home. It gave David unhappy flashbacks of his winter commute: dark and wet.

You can see a few more photos from Windsor in the photo album.

The weather has been so changeable here lately. It was so unbearably hot for weeks, and then this week has been almost cold! It has been in the mid-60s I think, dark and cloudy with lots of wind and occasional rain. It would seem like fall but all the leaves are on the trees. We're mostly quite happy with the change since we were unable to find an air conditioner for sale anywhere in the entire UK. It's supposed to warm up again this weekend, but only to the upper 70s, I think.