Portsmouth: England's Shipyard

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Today I ended my tour of south-east England with Portsmouth, home of the one of the most famous dockyards in the world.

That dockyard was my first stop. I went straight back to the HMS Victory, which is one of the most famous of warships and the oldest still in commission. It was an amazing ship, but I definitely would not want to live on it. It was very claustrophobic and the stairs would have killed me. They were so steep and narrow. There were parts of the ship where I couldn't stand up straight. I missed the plaque on where Admiral Nelson got shot somehow and had to walk through the ship again to see it. Can't exactly miss that part of the ship. The little museums throughout the Dockyard were interesting, but not amazing. The other ship was the HMS Warrior. It was the first ironclad ship and was so powerful that it deterred war and was never actually used. It was at once spacier and more claustrophobic than the Victory, depending on where you were on the ship. The engine room was really cool because you could look down at the massive engines and watch as they moved.

Spinnaker Tower was the next sight on my list. It was an interesting tower whose sole purpose was to attract tourists and be something to put on a postcard. It had a section of glass floor that you could walk across that made you feel like you were walking on air. It was a little dizzying. You could see the whole harbor, the Isle of Wight, and most of the town.

My last stop was the DDay Museum. It was small, but it had a really comprehensive timeline/history on the entire operation. They also had a massive embroidery creation. It was a series of cloth blocks that told the story of DDay with their pictures. It was essentially a really long and skinny quilt storybook. It was very impressive.

To kill time before my train I walked along the harbor, looking around, and then hit the major shopping center. There was a Cadburry store and in it I found a chocolate bar the size of my head!

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