Ah, Windsor Castle, in the county of Berkshire. We never saw you.

=D

I mean that in the best way possible. Jack purchased a tour in January for the two of us from Amazon Local (now defunct! How quickly the mighty fall, haha) that visited not only Stongehenge, but Windsor Castle and Bath as well for the grand price of £29 per person. Considering that we’ve been living in London for five months at this point, it seems about high time we got out of the city.

Windsor Castle, preferred weekend home of our current reigning Queen Elizabeth II, is also located close to a Legoland Resort.

Windsor Castle in all it’s blue-skied glory.

We visited neither, of course. The biggest reason was that admission into the castle was £20 per person and neither of us felt like shelling out when we were limited to roughly 2 hours to explore the world’s biggest house (484000 square feet!). Instead, we snapped some happy tourist shots and turned our back promptly on the lineup, heading instead into the town’s main streets.

Almost right from the very start we knew we had made a good choice. Why? Because of this:

Do you know what this means?

Food market!

The food market wasn’t set up just yet though, so we moseyed around town, ducking into old bookshops and finding a gorgeous, used, one-book edition of Lord of the Rings, covered by John Howe’s Gandalf. I stood forever in that Oxfam shop trying to figure out whether it was right to buy a book for £2 when I already had another lovely edition (although in a three-book set) of Tolkien’s masterpiece at home (but in Canada!).

Someone else could enjoy that same book, and discover Tolkien again, and if I buy this they might go read something else, like Martin’s Game of Thrones (augh!), I thought. And yet this edition is glorious, glorious…

Then, Jack bought the book, wiping all thoughts of could-be’s and should-be’s from my mind and winning me over once again.

Outside, the food market was ready and a few stalls were beginning to sizzle. Always a good sound. Our first stop was at a crepe stall, where we ordered a traditional French crepe lashed with lemon juice and sugar (£3). The simple things always manage to astonish me in how good they are. The heat of the crepe quickly melted the sugar, meaning that our crepe was flooded with a fresh, tangy lemon syrup. Oh joy.

Next up was a good ol’ English sausage in a bun (£4). I can’t say it was Berkshire pork, but it was tasty nonetheless! Caramelized onions do wonders for all foods.

There was a paella stand (Jack loves paella, ever since that market in Belfast) that we kept hoping would be ready before we had to leave Windsor, but alas, it was not to be. Instead, we went the sweet route, first buying a chili mango brownie (vegan and gluten-free for the grand price of £2.50) and then a Yu!-Bar for 50p (check out their site here! You can also find their products in UK Tesco’s). The lady at the Yu! stand was very cheery and generous with free samples =D.

Soon enough, our time in Windsor was up, and we hopped back on the tour bus towards the next stop: Stonehenge!