It's a Smashing, Positively Dashing Spectacle...

A few weekends ago, we went here...

We were invited by Calvin & Carike.

The Royal Ascot races have been around for almost 300 hundred years.

Here's what we thought.

First, the pros:
-It was really fun to dress up. I bought a new hat and skirt and Brent wore all 3 pieces of his 3 piece suit for the first time.

-The races themselves were pretty cool. There were 6 that day, we only stayed for the first 5. On the fifth one, a jockey fell off his horse right at the start but the horse kept going, as you can see here. It was funny. Don't worry, no one was injured.

-Talk about a cultural experience!
-We used the binoculars to sneak a peak into the more expensive sections and gawked at all of the morning coats and top hats and fancy ladies. There is a very strict dress code for the Royal Enclosure but not where we were.

-Even though there was no official dress code for the Silver Ring, where we were, most everyone was still dressed nicely. Men in suits, women in dresses with hats and fascinators. Some of the dresses were a little too short or low of both but as a whole, most everyone looked very nice.
-We saw a few silly hats and things. One man was wearing a bright orange tuxedo, much like the one Jim Carey wears in Dumb & Dumber and one group of women was obviously there for a Hen Party (Bachelorette party) because one of them was wearing a white gown and her hat was shaped like a wedding cake.

-We were at the same place as the Queen for a few hours, even though we only saw her on the big screen tv.
-The area we were in had large screen tv's so that we wouldn't miss any action, several food vendors and a live band.
-We didn't find it until the last 2 races, but there was seating in our section, not just open grassy areas to stand in. Although, standing does give you a chance to be right up next to the fence and we were really close to the horses for a couple of the races.

-Calvin & Carike were smart and suggested we leave before the last race so that we would have an easier time getting home, which I'm glad they did because this was the queue for the trains behind us. We would have waited hours to get home rather than the 20 minutes we were in the queue.

-We learned a lot of tips and better ways to do thins of we decide to go again next year.

The Cons:
-It took us an hour to get on the train to get to the races. Every train that came was so full that people were pressed up against the doors. Eventually, we stopped being nice and just shoved our way on. Brent and I were on different cars but we made it there.
-There were SO many people in the Silver Ring! I don't know the official number but my guess is thousands. The pictures don't do it justice.

-Since the whole thing is outdoors, there was smoke everywhere. Especially in the more crowded areas.
-We couldn't get on the same train as Calvin & Carike so we were just going to meet up once we got there. We couldn't find them and for some reasons either their phone and/or ours didn't work. Brent happened to finally spot them out of the blue right before the 5th race.

Overall, it was a pretty fun experience and I'm glad we went.