Southampton, England

I have no idea how I did it, but I managed to delete all the photos I took in Southampton yesterday. They were on my phone which was hooked up to my laptop and somehow they all went POOF!!! No, they did not go into my recycle bin or I would go there and retrieve them. They are just gone. I have no idea. Oh well, it's ok, they weren't anything special anyway.

We have another cruise coming up in September (a short one) that leaves out of Southampton, so we thought it would be a good idea while there to go check out the Airbnb we have rented and also some nearby places for the 2 or 3 meals we'll be eating here. The Airbnb is only 1.5 miles from the cruise port as the crow flies, but it would have been probably 2.5 miles after all the winding around to exit the port and walk to the location.

So instead we called an uber and had it drop us off at the address of the Airbnb, with a plan to walk the 15 minutes or so to a small neighborhood eatery that AI recommended. Just the walk alone helped us decide to scratch that idea. It was 11:55 when we arrived, so we had our choice to order off the breakfast or lunch menu. We chose the traditional English breakfast which consisted of eggs, English bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, some kind of mushroom and beans - thankfully no blood pudding! I had a burrito which was basically the same ingredients rolled up in a tortilla. 

 

classic English breakfast

English desserts are interesting, as are their names - banoffee pie, sticky toffee pudding, spotted dick, treacle sponge, mincemeat pie, etc. We shared the apple/blackberry crumble with custard sauce and practically licked the bowl. lol

We needed to walk after that but decided to uber to the Westquay area which was way too far on foot. Our plan was to figure out what we can do to keep ourselves awake after a long flight, knowing also that our Airbnb won't be available until mid-afternoon. 

The driver dropped us off on the street and it didn't look like much but upon entering we discovered a 3 story shopping mall with lots of shops and eateries. It attaches to more outside restaurants, a movie theater and more. There's also a grocery store about a block down, so we were satisfied that we can easily spend 4 or 5 hours there and have lunch before checking into our Airbnb. Of course we'll first need to store our luggage at the cruise terminal. Now we have a plan that should make our arrival at Southampton in September a bit easier, so it was a good use of our time. 

 

Southampton Civic Center (photo credit: Ronnie)

Yesterday was a super busy day on the ship. Around the World passengers who opted out of going around Africa returned yesterday. Also lots of new passengers got on, while other passengers were ending this segment and got off. We've had 120 travel agents on board since the last port so they left yesterday as well. Crew changes also took place so now we have 2 sweet girls taking care of our suite vs the 2 guys we've gotten used to. So there are lots of new faces on the ship and we are now on the home stretch. We ended our day in Red Ginger with another Aggie and his wife from Georgia.