I wish I could be a British Monarch

We got a really nice tour of some of the more obscure places in Amsterdam this morning on the way to the airport. The hotel's airport driver was really friendly and pointed us out several areas of the city where we would have never gone otherwise.

The Amsterdam airport is this huge sprawling place, and our gate seemed to be the farthest one from the ticket counters. Our taxi-out took almost as long as the actual flight to Gatwick.

We rented a car for our couple days in England, and ours came in the form of a Peugeot 207 diesel (with a stick, no less). I have driven in the UK before, but not with a stick, so I did a couple laps around the car park (that what Brits call a parking lot) to get familiar with the different shifting movements and then we set off for Windsor Castle.

After seeing Windsor Castle, I can't decide if I would rather be a European Emperor or a British Monarch. Our first stop was St. George's Chapel since it was going to close at 3pm. Now, I've seen my share of Gothic churches, and this one is maybe the best one of the bunch. There is just so much history in that building; so many Tudor kings and queens are buried there; all of the heraldric symbolism with the Order of the Garter; etc.

The actual tour of the castle included the "State Apartments" and Queen Mary's "Doll's House," which was an amazing feat of art and craftsmanship in itself. The State Apartments were as richly appointed as one might expect from a royal line that extends back through several centuries. The main banquet hall was enormous; the dining table is one unbroken surface and they line up all of the serving pieces with rulers (and probably lasers and hyper-accurate GPS, too).

I think I made a mistake when we parked the car and I parked in a timed lot where they appear to boot cars with religious zeal, so after a quick bite at the McDonalds (purely filler), we headed out towards our actual destination in the Cotswolds. I had this vision of sort of a British version of Provence, and it was basically exactly that.

Our B&B is in this old farmhouse that dates back to the early 19th century, and our hosts remind me of some old family friends from back in my childhood as they served us tea in their very well kept garden.

We ate dinner in the smallish town of Chipping Campden and then strolled around the mostly abandoned streets. See, here in the Cotswolds, everything besides pubs and restaurants closes at 5:30.

I assume that we'll just drive around all of the little villages tomorrow; stopping wherever we see something interesting.