Welcome to the sleepy little port town of Southampton, England, where the LeBeaus await their boarding passage on the Queen Mary 2, along with… oh… an entire international cadre of Hell’s Angels!!! I am certain “Hell’s Angels” and “The Queen Mary” were two phrases I never planned to use together in a sentence, but here it is on my Bingo card. We have checked in to our medium nice (Holiday Inn-ish or older Marriott vibes) hotel only to find it is the weekend meeting spot for an entire gang of European and international Hell’s Angels. In and of itself, they have proved lovely and reasonably quiet neighbors (other than an early morning very rumbly start to the day as they take off on their bikes ), and my only complaint is an inability to get in or out of the hotel due to the blockade of smokers lined up out front in the cold (I mean, who’s going to tell them to move?!). To be honest, Rob and I are praying that some of these guys actually DO come on the Queen Mary tomorrow… that stodgy old ship won’t know what hit it. We want to have a beer with them in the pub on the Mary… now THAT would be a trip memory!

There’s More to Life than Winchester

As we were leaving London yesterday, we managed to get a few pics of some iconic London landmarks, including the London Eye and the Houses of Parliament. I promised Rob we’d come back again (in the summer!) to explore some more of London.

Our train ride to Southampton was fast (only an hour) and easy. We rented a car when we arrived to use for running around. When we got here, the sweet young man (Rudy) at the rental place asked us why we were in town, etc.- the usual small talk. When we asked him what we should do while in Southampton, he paused for a moment to consider, then said “There’s a lovely city called Winchester that you can go see with some quite nice architecture only about 30 minutes away.” Yep- Rental Rudy’s solid advice: “Want some fun in Southampton? Leave town, drive 30 minutes north.” Had a good laugh at that one.

Southampton does have a good central business district with plenty of shops and restaurants, so we have managed to gather most of what we wanted for the cruise. We are repacking the new suitcase we purchased here and have plenty of laundry to do, but it’s all good. We had a good pizza dinner last night and did a last run of stores tonight. The temperature here has been mostly in the 30s, but no rain (and no snow 😢). I wouldn’t have minded a little snow this winter!

Southampton was also once a walled city, and you can still walk sections of those original walls. We enjoyed our walks along several stretches of the wall today, and got pictures of several sections, including a merchants house built between 1170-1200! Southampton is also an important maritime center, as we could tell by the giant stack of shipping containers at the port.

Some other cool Southampton facts we learned:

• The Mayflower departed from Southampton carrying Pilgrims to the New World in 1620. They even have a monument to it here (pics below), which struck us as a bit odd, but we didn’t build it.
• The Titanic began its tragic maiden voyage from Southampton in 1912.
• Southampton was a critical embarkation point for D-Day and home to the Supermarine factory where the Spitfire was designed during WWII. 

Old Friend, New Friend!

Our highlight of our Southampton stay was getting to have lunch with Kevin (old friend) and his lovely bride Hannah (new friend)! Hannah lives here in Southampton as they work to get her a visa to join Kevin in Florida. We had a fantastic lunch with them at an Italian restaurant, with lots of laughs.

After lunch we headed over to a local brewery (Dancing Man Brewery) that is housed in a building built in the 1300s! Gotta love the history here. The building had a very cool history of uses including a storehouse for wool and alum, a French prison, a boat building warehouse, and a Maritime Museum before becoming the current restaurant and brewery it is. Fun fact: if you look closely, you can still see names of some of the French prisoners who carved their names into the wood rafters in the building. The kind owners let us go check them out (pics below). It was a great venue in which to end our afternoon.

We are now back in the hotel prepping suitcases for tomorrow’s voyage on the Queen Mary 2! It will be an 8 day trip straight across the Atlantic (no stops) and probably no WiFi (haven’t decided if we want to spring for the package), so we may be off the grid until we reach New York on 1/19. We will update upon arrival, or sooner if we can. And as always, thanks for adventuring with us!!