Blogs from Southampton, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Cruise Day Today is the start of our British Isles cruise with Princess departing from Southampton. We took an Uber from our cousin Jean’s house to the London Victoria Coach Station. From the Coach station, we boarded a coach prearranged with Princess Cruises to the Southampton Princess Cruise port. After getting our Princess Medallions we settled into our rooms and started to explore the ship. We enjoyed the buffet, sat in the hot tub and had some coffee at the café. We enjoyed some alcoholic beverages while reading our books by the pool. There were various activities on the ship and we enjoyed picking and choosing the activities we wanted to go to. There were daily shows and movies under the stars. However, what Renata and I enjoyed the most were the various ports of call ... read more

March 31 – We’re Alive..... Kirsten wakes me up.... It’s 6:30 am, we’re alive and we’ve made it to Southampton. I rollover and mumble great, wake me up later for breakfast in a couple of hours. Just like an alarm clock, Kirsten wakes me up fully dressed and ready to explore Southampton. I rollout and crawl to the bathroom. Kirsten says I’ll be up on the LIDO deck waiting for you, the next sound I hear is the door slamming. I’m half dressed, brushing my teeth and I hear the door opening. It’s Edwin, coming to clean the room. I swear he is living in our closet. I finish dressing and head out the door, Goodbye Mr. Steve.... Kirsten in true form is waiting and ready to go, she has made me breakfast and lunch and ... read more

Yesterday was a perfect day. Up on time (a miracle) we parked up at the station in Bridgenorth We then re parked when we realised we'd parked as far away as it was possible to park from the station itself. We got on our steam engine in our own compartment for the day and off we went. We (ash) heat a great time filling in the kids eyes spy booklet they gave us and spotting milk horses, wool dogs and ham cats out of the window ? Our first stop was Kidderminster for a wander round. Ash had to be pulled away from the box of free VHS tapes in the 'antiques' shop and Seth developed diabetes and a green face from the ridiculous lolly he persuaded is was a good idea.,...we had a cuppa, escaped ... read more

Princess Cruises provided a transfer from our London hotel to the cruise terminal in Southampton. Once again, a private driver and car picked us up. It was quite interesting to converse with the driver, an immigrant from Afghanistan, about the current world situation. He had a brother located in New York state and a sister in Germany. His brother operates an Afghan restaurant while he is a professional driver using his own car. I must note that I found it interesting that highway distances are still indicated in miles in the UK while temperature and other measurements are given in Metric. I've known Southampton as the arrival and departure port for the great transatlantic ocean liners during much of the 20th century. The Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, S.S. United States and QEII as well as the ... read more

Tuesday 5th January, 2016. Embark Marco Polo Yesterday we received a message on voicemail to inform us that we would now be embarking the ship at Southampton instead of Avonmouth. We were a little p***ed off about this as the same thing had happened to us last year! At the 11th hour we were told we would not be going from Avonmouth but from Plymouth. So now we have a 3/3 score of not departing or arriving at Avonmouth - our home town!!! Even more irritating was that we had arranged to have lunch with our friends Mike and Liz who are kindly storing our decrepit car on the driveway of their posh Southfork Ranch type house. The change of port meant that we had to check in earlier than originally planned so that we could ... read more