Seas2mountains

In the meantime, here are sunset photos from Southampton.

I’m not done with the updates for today including Salisbury Cathedral. I’ll be sure to uodate this tomorrow.

People dressed in white at Stonehenge.

Something I didn’t know was that it was a 1.5 mile walk from the visitor center and bus drop off point to Stonehenge. The wait for a shuttle bus for a ride to Stonehenge was 30 minutes or more. We didn’t want to wait in line for 30 minutes so we started walking towards Stonehenge. My husband was still complaining about the 1.5 mile walk there and back. I then remembered Clark Grisswold’s (played by Chevy Chase) speech in the movie, Vacation. I mentioned to my husband about this speech and his crankiness turned into laughs and smiles as he also remembered. We then were laughing so much and he stopped complaining about the walk. We were then on a quest to see Stonehenge. In case you don’t remember, here it is: “Well I'll tell you something, this is no longer a vacation. It's a quest. It's a quest for fun! I'm gonna have fun, and you're gonna have fun. We're all gonna have so much f****** fun we'll need plastic surgery to remove our g-dam smiles! You'll be whistling 'Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah' out of your a***holes!” And we made it to Stonehenge. And we made it back to the bus. And we had fun. I don’t know if we were whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah’ but we practically needed the plastic surgery to remove our smiles. Ha ha! a Here are photos from the walk. It is a shorter walk to stay on the pavement vs. the nature path. We have no idea why so many people when dressed in white?!? Anyone know why?

After having breakfast at the hotel, we left at about 8:10am to walk about 0.7 miles to the Southampton Central train station. We took the 8:37am train to Salisbury which arrived after 9:15am. It was interesting to see the very beautiful English countryside. We walked around a little and then were among the first people to line up for the Stonehenge bus tour which was scheduled to start at 10:00am. The bus arrived at 9:40am and we were allowed to get on the bus. The driver sold tickets to anyone who had not prepurchased tickets. This added time to each transaction. After cooking in the sun with no airflow whole the bus was idle, we finally left the train station after 10am. Then we went to city stop to do the same thing with collecting payments from those who had not booked online. We were finally react to go to Stonehenge but then hit a lot of traffic. We finally got to Stonehenge after 11am and after being able to take photos from the road while stuck in traffic, my husband said he was done with Stonehenge and the crowds and he was ready to take the bus back to the hotel.

There it is in the distance. We are still on the bus as we work through traffic.

Good morning! We had breakfast at the hotel and we walked about 0.8 miles to the Southampton Central train station. We are now on a train to Salisbury. We plan to get on a bus at the train station to go to Stonehenge followed by Salisbury Cathedral. It’s a 38 minute ride. There is an app that makes it easy to find the train schedule and stops enroute. When I lived in Germany about 25 years ago, I learned how easy it was to use the trains to get around in Europe. This is new to my husband with the exception of using trains in the US.

The ships in port today are Silver Spirit at berth 101 and MSC Virtuosa in berth 102. Prima is scheduled to arrive tomorrow at 5:15am with a sun rise time at 4:51am. We are so excited to be one day away! There are other cruise ship terminals in Southampton besides these two terminals.

I promise to share hotel photos and details after we check out tomorrow.

Thank you! We are really looking forward to seeing the beautiful fjord and mountains in Geiranger.

I don’t mind if others who have been on this itinerary can give recommendations for @TRTLscout . We have NCL excursions booked in Reykjavik with the Golden Circle tour and in Geiranger for a mountain tour. We are doing the other ports on our own. We have an NCL airport transfer from the ship to the airport in Reykjavik booked. We had a private car through BlackBerry cars to go from LHR to Southampton.

Thank you! We tried to make a booking for Dancing Man Brewery but they are booked until next week on Wednesday. It was too windy tonight to join the young people outside enjoying beer and cocktails at the outside tables at Dancing Man Brewery. We appreciate the other recommendations and will see if we can fit either in tomorrow.

Now we are at over 21.000 steps and are fighting to stay awake a little longer to try to adapt to our new time zone. Good night from Southampton.

Dinner at Emmio’s Italian restaurant was exceptional and we definitely recommend it even though it was a little pricey. But hey, we are on vacation. We made a “booking” for 6pm and were the first and only customers for about 15 minutes. We don’t usually eat bread to avoid carbs, but today was an exception. We also ordered mussels as an appetizer. The mussels were served with a lovely, creamy sauce and were delicious. While my husband is so sweet to claim that I make the best lasagna, he really enjoyed his lasagna with yummy garlic toast. I ordered the “trout” with mash (mashed potatoes) and Asparagus. It was steel head trout and not trout from a fresh water lake or trout as I expected. My husband said it was one of the best experiences he has had for service in a restaurant. He noticed that each employee seemed trained to do each others job. When the host stepped away and some customers walked in, he noticed that a waiter stepped in to pull up the booking (reservation) and quickly seated the couple. Part way through the meal, a large party came in. One said they had a booking for 6 people and another had a booking for 4 people but they wanted to be seated together at a table for 10 people. This group definitely stressed the wait staff as they tried to explain to the customers the tables that were reserved for later bookings. This group didn’t care and insisted on being seated together.

By the time we got back to the hotel room about 3pm, we had walked 19,000 steps. The goal is to be totally worn out so we will sleep well tonight. At about 15,000 steps, my husband started feeling pain in joints such as his knees and ankles. I’m blessed to not feel any pain (so far -knocking on wood) after these long walks and feel like I could have walked another 10,000 steps or more. After naps, our afternoon entertainment involved watching Anthem of the Seas do an almost 360 turn at sail away.

Here are more photos of the city walls. My husband has really enjoyed looking at these walls and wondering about life back in the days when the walls were built. I have been amazed how well they were constructed and are still standing after all these years. Here is a church with similar architecture.

We had a wonderful lunch at a restaurant called Bill’s. This was located at the Westquay Shopping Centre. The weather was perfect again with sunny skies and temperature were in the low 70’s. When we arrived at the hostess stand, we were asked if we had a booking. We did not but the hostess said she could seat us outside. Wonderful - because we wanted to eat outside anyways. My husband saw olives as an appetizer at another table and he loves olives almost as much as cheese. The peach and mint iced tea was nicely garnished. While we were waiting for our entrees, it was fun to watch people walking past or in the water fountains. If you look closely at the first photo you can see part of the medieval wall of what looks like a castle. My husband ordered a cheeseburger with fries. He said it was good but he couldn’t eat any of the fries as he felt too full. I ordered pan fried sea bream fish with couscous and green beans. It was delicious and I would order it again. We would recommend and go back to Bill’s if given the opportunity.

The next stop was to go to the SeaCity museum about a mile away. It is focused on the history of the crew members on the Titanic as most crew members lived in Southampton. I didn’t take photos of the displays but it was interesting and I would visit again.

Next stop was a few blocks away at the Ocean Village Marina where there are restaurants and shops along the marina. We were checking out the massive yacht, The Special One.

We spent the morning and early afternoon exploring Southampton. My husband liked our visit to the Solent Sky Museum. The volunteers or employees who ran the museum were super friendly and funny.

After having a decent breakfast at the hotel, we decided to walk towards the Horizon cruise terminal and berth 102 where the Prima will be on Sunday morning. We wanted to make sure we could walk all the way without hitting any barriers. We confirmed that we could as we were able to walk to the Horizon terminal without being stopped by security. Regent Seven Seas is in that berth today. It is about a half mile walk from our hotel to the cruise terminal. The Anthem of the Seas was in berth 101 at the City Cruise Terminal.

Good morning from Southampton. This was taken at 5:30am local time. Wrong ship but it is a beautiful morning. It is the Anthem of the Seas. The good news is that I was able to get 5 hours of sleep last night.

My husband can’t stay awake and I hope I can fall asleep soon. Here is a view of the sunset from our hotel room. Tomorrow will include touring around Southampton. Saturday is Stonehenge and Salisbury.

Thank you! I can definitely add it when we get home. I’ll have to edit some parts out. It is a little corny as it has some bad Dad jokes included for our granddaughter.

We went to the hotel restaurant for dinner. The fish and chips were calling my name although I should have asked to skip the traditional mushy peas as I knew I didn’t care for them based on past travels to London. I’ve enjoyed fish and chips on past visits and this dinner did not disappoint. That was definitely one of the biggest pieces of fish I’ve had for fish n chips. My husband got a pizza with different types of meat. He said it was okay but had too much tomato sauce and not enough meat and cheese. He would not order it again. He said the chorizo promised as a pizza ingredient on the menu was missing. Service was excellent. The waiter let is know a 10% service charge was automatically added to the bill but could be removed if requested. We were happy it was added and know this is typical.