Windsor visit

Last week, N and I went to visit my nan.  She doesn’t really get out of the house, and being over an hour away, we don’t get over there more than once or twice a year given full time working and busy weekends.

We didn’t stay long as there’s not a lot for N to do even if I take toys and books with us.  He had a kick around in the garden, and sat and read a book with her – it’s dangerous to let him too loose in a house with lots of photo frames and china ornaments.

Afterwards we decided we’d head into Windsor to grab some lunch.  I used to live in Windsor when I was a young child, and have been back occasionally for work research groups but it’s changed a lot.

All around the station, it’s now a concourse of upmarket shops, cafes and restaurants, so we grabbed some lunch there.  N loved nosy-ing at the table next to us – we were in Costa, they were in Café Rouge, so it was all a little odd.

Then I said we could walk up to the castle.  Of course, the place was full of tourists – the benches outside the castle were full of Japanese and as we walked past, I’m not sure N knew what to make of them all sitting eating their packed lunches and snapping away (I can’t really talk about taking photos though!).

We’d missed the changing of the guard, and there weren’t sentry guards like there used to be outside.  Just armed Police.  Not quite the interesting picture I thought he’d be seeing, and I’m not sure the tourists want to see SWAT style police uniforms compared with the more traditional uniforms they might think they’d have seen.

N wasn’t too fussed about the castle.  He’s not got into knights and castles yet…if it had been pirates, it might have been a different story (his new favourite book’s Pirates love Underpants!) link.

But we had a good old walk back up through the station concourse to see The Queen engine which is on display there.

We stopped in a few shops – Windsor’s great as there’s lots of shops there that I like but don’t get near home, and saw a Polarn O. Pyret for the first time.  I’ve heard them mentioned a lot on blogs and on twitter so thought it’d be worth having a look.  There wasn’t anything we needed, but the Brio train and road track in the middle of the store was brilliant for keeping N entertained.  More activities like that needed in more shops needed I think.

The most traumatic part of the day was manoeuvring the car out of the King Edward’s car park.  It’s a great location, but it has the narrowest spaces, no kids spaces but millions of disabled ones, so luckily we could park on the roof where there was plenty of room.  Getting out round the corners going down 7 storeys was interesting though – I was following a little Micra and even they had to take it slowly as the ramps were extremely tight.  Must remember next time to park elsewhere.

It was a nice day, and good for N to see his Great Nan again.

Do your children get to see extended family much?