Sisterchicks Go Brit! (20 page)

We were puffing our way alongside lithe Annette as the road to the castle continued at a steady incline. The sky was a brilliant shade of fresh spring blue, and before us Windsor Castle rose with jaw-dropping majesty. The majesty wasn’t due just to the sheer size and solid presence of the castle and surrounding grounds. Being on a hill, Windsor majestically commands a determined effort from those who want to come in her gates and participate in one of the tours.

Kellie, Annette, and I formed a jolly, rosy-cheeked trio by the time we made it to the ticket booth at the grounds’ entrance.

Once again we opted for the self-guided tour that came with the audio wands. This was especially good for Annette because she could rent the French version.

Our tour began in a room that contained a fabulous dollhouse built for Princess Anne. The three-story dollhouse came complete with miniature furniture in every room and working electric lights.

The royal family still occupies a portion of Windsor Castle. When I heard that, I assumed our tour would be limited. It wasn’t. We walked through dozens of rooms, viewed endless pieces of original furniture, and lingered by the windows in one of the grand rooms where we could gaze out at the gardens and the peaceful-looking town that gathers at the hem of the sloping green castle grounds. We viewed cases filled with weapons, armor, and bits and pieces of historic memorabilia.

“What do you think?” I asked Annette. “Is this as much of a fairy-tale castle as castles in France?”

“I have only been to the Palace of Versailles. This castle I like more.”

“Why?” I asked.

She seemed to have difficulty forming her sentence in response. “Versailles is a sad beauty to me. Much, much rich. Much of this.” She pointed to one of the huge oil portraits in the hall.

“Too many portraits at Versailles?” I asked.

She didn’t seem to recognize the word
portraits
.

“Paintings,” Kellie tried. “Pictures of people. Are you saying the castle in France has too many pictures of famous people?”

“No, this.” She pointed more directly at the highly detailed, inlaid gold carvings in the frame of one of the pictures.

“Ah! Too many ornate decorations. Too many fancy details in the décor.”

“Yes, décor. Here, I like the beauty because it is a strong beauty. I like this castle.”

“I like it too,” I said. I also liked Annette’s term “strong beauty.”

All of us were ready at the same time to be done with the royal tour. We turned in our audio wands and exited the castle just as a procession was coming across the cobblestones. The three of us stood back to watch as the castle guards came marching by in stiff formation. The procession of the guards in their tall, bearskin hats and shiny brass-buttoned uniforms was powerful and impressive. We watched for more than ten minutes as the company moved into formation, shifted their bayonet-tipped weapons from one shoulder to the other, and clicked the heels of their well-shined boots. This was protocol to the smallest detail, and we were certain the drill was unfolding just the way it had been performed for centuries.

After a pleasant detour through the garden, where we took lots of pictures, Annette, Kellie, and I headed down the hill into town in search of some lunch. At one of the checkpoints along
the stone wall, a castle guard stood like a statue in front of a small wooden guard station. He kept his gaze straight ahead from under the huge, rounded hat. His mannequin stance just begged us to go up to him and try to make him smile.

“Go ahead,” I told Annette. “I’ll take your picture.”

She smiled, her shyness returning. “You first. I will take your picture.”

“Okay.” I took her challenge as if I were her twenty-two-year-old traveling companion and not someone who was almost old enough to be her grandmother.

Marching right up to the soldier, I stood as close as I dared and smiled nice and bright. The guard didn’t flinch.

“Thank you,” I said to him.

He didn’t answer.

I walked back to where Kellie and Annette stood. “Your turn,” I told Annette.

She grinned and tried to express her teasing suggestion. “I will make with the computer, the photo with my face on you.”

“Oh no you won’t! I stood by the guard. Now it’s your turn.”

“Go ahead.” Kellie held out her hand and offered to take Annette’s camera from her. “I’ll take the picture.”

“No, no, no.” Annette shook her head.

“Oui, oui, oui,” I said.

She laughed, pressed her shoulders back, and handed her camera to Kellie. “I have to be nice.”

We weren’t sure if that meant she was showing respect to the elderly, meaning Kellie and me, or if she was telling herself to be nice to the guard.

“Closer.” Kellie looked through the viewfinder of Annette’s camera. Annette was standing at least six feet away from the guard. I had stood only inches from him.

“Closer,” I echoed.

Annette complied and made an adorably cute grimace. Kellie snapped the shot. The guard never flinched or gave any indication he was aware of our presence.

Annette joined us and in a coy voice said, “I think he wants to marry me.”

We giggled together, and I thought of what a common denominator humor can be. Women around the world love to tease each other. Regardless of cultural differences or language barriers, women always can share a giggle over boys. Such is the evidence of an uncomplicated friendship.

In that spirit of uncomplicated camaraderie, we continued our chummy procession down the hill, settled gladly on the first tea shop we came to, and took a table by the front window. The shop was old, as evidenced by the uneven window frame that looked like a victim of centuries of settling.

“Did you see this quote on the menu about tea?” Kellie pointed to a line at the bottom. “It says, ‘The cup that cheers but does not inebriate. William Cowper.’ ”

“Clever.”

“Do you know what is this?” Annette pointed to an entry on the menu that was labeled “Teatime.” At this simple yet very old tea shop, the “teatime” fare was nothing like the abundance served at the Ritz. Here it was two scones with clotted cream and jam along with a pot of tea.

I explained the “teatime” selection to Annette, and she closed her menu saying, “Yes. I have not eaten this.”

“You haven’t had scones and tea yet?” Kellie asked.

“No.”

Kellie and I exchanged smiles. It felt fun being the ones to introduce sweet Annette to what might gladly become our new afternoon habit. Our smug thoughts were laughable because the two of us were far from experienced in matters of tea or scones or clotted cream.

Regardless, we both were looking pretty confident when the waitress came to our table and we placed the order for Annette. That’s when I realized that Kellie and I suddenly had taken on the roles of Opal and Rose. We were the older women inviting the younger woman to be our travel companion. At least we hadn’t asked Annette to carry anything for us yet, like folding spectator chairs.

But then, the day wasn’t over.

W
here did the sunshine go
”
Kellie asked, as we exited the tea shop at the foot of Windsor Castle.

The three of us looked up and gave a scowl to the gathering clouds. Over the last few days we had become so used to glorious sunshine and pristine blue skies that we almost had forgotten this was the onset of spring, and we were visiting a place that is notoriously green for a reason.

Our quick-footed trot the rest of the way down the hill to the train station was a feeble attempt to beat the coming raindrops. The raindrops won. We were damp when we boarded the train that would take us back to London, but the heater was going, and we dried out quickly.

On the ride back we exchanged our contact information with Annette and invited her to stay with us if she ever visited the Orlando area. She responded with the same kindness, saying, “You would be good for my mother. She does not go out
of our small town. I wish her … she … I wish she be with me today.”

We told her that until this trip, neither of us had gone anywhere adventurous without our husbands or families.

“When I told my daughter that Kellie and I were coming to England, she said we were going on a ‘Sisterchicks’ trip.”

“ ‘Sisterchicks’?”

“Like a girlfriends’ getaway or a best friends’ adventure. Maybe you and your mother can take a Sisterchicks trip and the two of you can visit us in Orlando.”

“Maybe.” Annette smiled. “It would be more possible that you would come to see us in France.”

Our train rolled into Paddington Station, and the time came to say good-bye to Annette. I felt a sweet sadness. Annette seemed to feel it as well. She hugged me good-bye, pressing her cheek to mine and releasing a soft kiss into the air. She hugged Kellie the same way.

In a final tease I said, “In the movies they show the French people giving kisses on both cheeks.”

Annette grinned and wagged a finger at me. “That is for only the French. You—you have only one kiss this time.”

“Oh, I see how it is,” I said, still teasing. “When Kellie and I come to France someday, maybe you can make us honorary Frenchwomen. Then, when we leave, you can give us two kisses.”

“Or maybe three.” She grinned as if she knew a few secrets
about French protocol that I wouldn’t be able to decode on a single visit.

Annette left with a final wave, and Kellie and I looked at each other as if we had just lost our favorite kitten.

“She was a doll,” I said.

“I hope she comes to Florida one day. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

I nodded. “So? What do you think? Are we still planning to go from here to Buckingham Palace?”

“If you would like, sure. We’re too late for the changing of the guard, but then we did see the drill with the castle guards.”

“And it is raining,” I added.

“What if we took a bus ride around town? We could go past Buckingham and get off if we want or keep riding if we want.”

“Great idea, Kellie.”

We found a bus stop right away and ducked under the covering with a dozen other people. Kellie read over the route information posted, and together we compared the posted route map with our foldout map. I’m sure our discussion made it obvious we were confused tourists, unsure which bus to take.

A young man dressed in a business suit and wearing a turban stood beside us and was privy to our conversations about Buckingham Palace and the other sights we were trying to see in one big loop.

“Madams, may I kindly give a recommendation?” His rich Indian accent reminded me of Sara Crewe’s benevolent Ram Dass
from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s novel
A Little Princess
. As alluded to in the novel, Britain’s influence in India at the turn of the nineteenth century caused a rapid increase in the Indian population in London. In crowded public places around London, such as the train stations, we had seen a much greater mix of cultures than we ever saw at home in Winter Park.

“If you take this one”—he pointed to one of the routes on the list—“bus 73 on the Green Line will take you past Hyde Park and Buckingham Palace. You can change at Victoria to whatever direction you need to go from there.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You are most kindly welcome.”

The next bus was packed with people who smashed their way into the limited standing space. Kellie and I pressed our way to the narrow metal stairs that led to the top level. Up top on the full double-decker bus, we found an open seat for the two of us along the right side toward the front. We bobbed along with fogged-up windows, trying to make out the sights below us.

One tourist tip I remembered reading at home the week before was to be sure to sit above the street level on a double-decker bus and not to always take the underground or a cab to travel about town. The reasoning was that, from this second-story perch, one would have an eye-level view of the intricate decorations on many of the Victorian buildings. This was the case as the bus plodded through the traffic before turning onto a main thoroughfare marked “Bayswater.”

“We never finished our conversation,” Kellie said.

“Which conversation was that?”