Ships, castles and spas – passing through southern England and Wales COMPLETED - Page 20 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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There are other changes as well.
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Sunday 14 June – part one: visiting Southampton’s historic centre
It was another early start, as I first woke up at 6:00am, but thankfully went back to sleep for an hour. When I got up, there was a ship outside our window, and this is one we’d be getting to know a lot better in a year’s time, as it was the Celebrity Eclipse that we’d be doing the Baltic cruise on.
Look at all the coaches out there for it!
When we looked again, there was another one further down…
Bearing in mind all the warnings of doom in the elevator, we headed down early for breakfast, getting there not much after 7:30am, and I have to say, it was a lot busier than I’d expected. We took the big suitcase down, and Mark put that in the car, so that was done, while I got a table.
The selection was pretty good….
… but this is what I was most taken with!
It told me that I’d get a “perfect pancake”, and despite my initial cynicism about that, actually they were pretty darned good!
We headed back to our room, got the rest of our stuff, and packed it all into the car – this is how the roses were travelling, and they were fine!
As we had plenty of time before we were due to pick up Bruce and Marta, we headed into the historic heart of Southampton to explore it. Now I’ll be honest here, I really didn’t know that Southampton had a historic centre, but it does, and it’s got some beautiful buildings, as you can see:
The only disappointment to me was that next to these gorgeous buildings were some real eyesores. They were concrete monstrosities, and how on earth anyone thought that was a good idea, goodness only knows!
We found our way back down to the seafront….
… and found this place…
Then we drove through other bits of Southampton, seeing the Tudor House…
… and the city walls behind it…
… and a couple of other cool buildings…
We found this historic place…
… and now I can show you what I mean by monstrosities…
A pancake maker machine?! Wow, cool. That's quite the spread for breakfast.
Those tudor house is gorgeous as is Jane Austen's place. But yeah, the modern ones don't quite blend in....
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The breakfast spread looks really good. I need one of those pancake makers for myself! The historic center of Southampton is really nice, but I agree about the ugly modern buildings!
A pancake maker machine?! Wow, cool. That's quite the spread for breakfast.
Those tudor house is gorgeous as is Jane Austen's place. But yeah, the modern ones don't quite blend in....
Those were some lovely historic buildings in Southampton, but too bad with the contrast with the modern as they don't go well together! That was quite funny with the pancake machine....the shape of them was a bit odd, with the corners! Quite a busy port area with so many large cruise ship here. The Titanic did set sail from here as well! That must be so surreal for the two of you to see the ship docked in port that you will be cruising on in the Baltics next year!
You must have been tempted (if you could) to walk on that ship and give yourselves a comprehensive tour!
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Those were some lovely historic buildings in Southampton, but too bad with the contrast with the modern as they don't go well together! That was quite funny with the pancake machine....the shape of them was a bit odd, with the corners!
I can forgive the shape of them, given how good they tasted...
Quote:
Quite a busy port area with so many large cruise ship here. The Titanic did set sail from here as well! That must be so surreal for the two of you to see the ship docked in port that you will be cruising on in the Baltics next year!
It was a bit!
Quote:
You must have been tempted (if you could) to walk on that ship and give yourselves a comprehensive tour!
Well, I must admit I did wonder if we could walk from the hotel to board the ship, as it was so close by.
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Sunday 14 June – part two: look at what’s going on here!
We found another section of Southampton’s historic city walls, so pulled up to take a closer look…
… but a little further along, look at what was going on here! From what we could tell, this is going to be a massive extension to the shopping centre you can already see here. We both felt that it was a shame that something is being built here, as then people won’t be able to see these beautiful city walls any longer. I hope that they build sympathetically, and you can still see them, but I guess we’ll find out when we come back in June of next year.
We headed out of the city…
… and made it over to the Holiday Inn Express to pick up Bruce and Marta. To say they were not happy about the mix-up would be an understatement. They really did not like the hotel at all, and had had a terrible dinner last night, and a not great breakfast this morning. We kept quiet about how good our experience had been, as we didn’t want to rub it in.
We headed off, and were soon entering Portsmouth…
We found the car park and parked up, and made our way towards the dockyard…
The Spinnaker Tower, which we’ve been up before – the views are very cool from there
We went to go and get the tickets, and Bruce surprised us by buying tickets for us as well.
We made our way over to the Mary Rose Museum…
… and saw HMS Victory, Nelson’s famous ship, on the way:
We headed inside, and were surprised to find some very limited restroom facilities in there, given that this is one of the main attractions at the dockyard. There was literally one cubicle for women and one for men, and that was it!
This is the first area you enter…
It’s got some introductory information about the Mary Rose, then you go in to see a brief video about the day the ship sank.
After that, you walk into this area, which takes you through the battle that was raging when she sank…
You also learn a bit more about the people on board…
… why she sank, or perhaps I should say the best guesses
What a bustling port! I'm with you on the modern buildings and the new shopping center, but if the revenue from those enterprises helps to preserve the older ones (I don't know who pays for that!), then I guess they have a place, too. It looks like you could spend several days there exploring the old town and the ships.
Laurie makes a great point - if the new buildings and developments help pay for the preservation of the historic buildings, I suppose it makes sense. I'm really hoping that historic wall is still clearly visible when you return next year!
I hope the real Mary Rose had more facilities than you encountered!
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We took the big suitcase down, and Mark put that in the car, so that was done, while I got a table. 
they don't....
Quite a busy port area with so many large cruise ship here. The Titanic did set sail from here as well! 
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