Windsor Castle

We live in the "Royal Borough of Maidenhead and Windsor", meaning we are in the Queen's neighborhood. So, to be good neighbors, we thought it time we baked a plate of cookies and dropped in on the Queen. We live 6.3 miles from the castle, which is in the town of Windsor. (I think the castle came first)
Queen Elizabeth II splits her time between two primary residences, Buckingham Palace and Windsor Palace, the place where the Royal family is quoted as saying, "that we feel more comfortable than any other." And of course they feel comfortable, it's about 484,000 square feet and 1,000 years old. It, like the Tower of London, was originally built by William the Conqueror between 1066 & 1087. (And like the Tower, no photography allowed inside) As is the case with our house, it has been regularly remodeled. The oldest section is the round tower seen behind the kids. It is on a man made hill overlooking the surrounding countryside, a very defensable position. One of the highlights of the tour is Queen Mary's Dollhouse built as a gift for the queen. It is a cube about 6 feet on each side, the exterior of the dollhouse looks like a castle and can be lifted for access to the individual doll rooms. Each is beautifully decorated, complete with electric lighting and working plumbing.
Pieces of the Royal Art Collection are on display in several rooms, with some amazing examples of great masters over the centuries. Of particular interest were several DaVinci drawings. And of course there are many, many 20 foot tall paintings of Kings and Queens. The collection is so massive, and so fragile, that they rotate the pieces on display.
We saw hundreds of swords, guns and suits of armor. They make a point of showing you just how fat Henry VIII was by the size of his suit of armor. The man was tall and must have weighed over 300 pounds!
The very 'castle like' picture is the interior courtyard and where the Queen accesses her Royal apartments. (Sadly, we were not invited in - rude!) The other two pictures are the guards which are in the process of changing (we, of course, picked a day with no fancy 'changing of the guard' demonstration - just marching). And then the flag you see indicates whether or not the queen is home. If the flag is the Union Jack, the flag of England, the Queen is elsewhere. If the Queen's colors are flying, she is home. The picture was taken on a typical English day - grey and ugly - so you can't really tell from the picture. You'll have to trust me, the Queen was in residence.
The tour took us through many of the rooms the Queen actually uses for entertaining. Just amazing. There was a fire in the castle in 1992 which destroyed several of the rooms we visited, so they had been rebuilt and were in immaculate condition. There is a huge hall where the Queen entertains in which they seat a table for 160.
I did note that the Royal family throughtout the centuries was uniformly homely. Very sad.