The Penultimate Day

The day after our badminton adventure, we set out for Eton. On one of the hottest days of August, our trusty SatNav tried to take us through central London in the middle of a workday, but after a bit (okay, a lot) of reprogramming, water-drinking, scathing looks directed from the driver to the ‘navigator’ (I use that term loosely to describe myself), and about four U-turns, we finally made it south to the M25: the John’s Road of Greater London. Two hours later, we arrived at The Hilton.

The horizontal blue route is the SatNav suggested route.
The big blue loop to the south is the faster M25 motorway route

Yes, you heard right - The Hilton. It was the best deal we could find, and we figured it was something we should do at least once in our lives. Our hotel room had recently been redecorated, and we were impressed with the results.

We were also impressed with the view:

Yes, that is grass (Grass!) and rabbits (Rabbits!). It was a nice change from a noisy, dusty construction site, and it was BLISS to have a room that was pitch black at night because it was pitch black outside! (Incidentally, I can’t wait until our next country holiday…)

After checking in, we drove in to Windsor – the closest town to Eton Dorney, the Olympic rowing venue. It was another lovely country town, and a lovely sunny day. We were also surprised to see many happy Kiwis walking down the main street – it wasn’t until we got back to our hotel room and saw the evening news that we realised New Zealand had won gold and bronze in rowing that day.

After a fashion we came across Eton College, but unfortunately we just missed the walking tour of the campus. We also checked out Windsor Castle, but at $66 NZD for the two of us to enter, we decided to save our money for a rainy day, and instead we wandered around the beautiful streets of Windsor.

This reminds me of a house I saw on
Feb 22 in Christchurch...

Eton College Chapel - built between 1440-1480.

The next morning, our alarm rudely woke us at 5am. We gathered our All-Blacks jerseys, NZ flags, and black and white facepaint. Was this the day we would see a New Zealander win gold at an Olympic Games??