Thankfully, we had a good night’s sleep with no disturbances at all and even without air conditioning, the room temperature was OK. We were awake before the alarm and headed downstairs for the complimentary breakfast. Although smoked haddock with poached egg was on the menu and I was tempted, I opted for the usual full English. We left in plenty of time to get to the British Legion Hall in Winton, where Simon was holding the lessons. This was easy enough to find and Simon arrived just a minute after us.
I left them to it and walked through Winton, passing Latimer Road, where Fortes used to have a self-service restaurant and next door to the Forte’s head office where Auntie Ethel used to work.
Like most high streets these days, the number of charity shops, banks and estate agents outnumber the traditional high street shops, though I did have a productive visit to Pound Land. I emerged a few minutes later with two cans of juice, an 80cm bungee cord with carabiners and two 3 packs of vacuum luggage bags. Same as the ones we bought in NZ for $8 a three pack. The total bill was just £4 (so about $8 in total). I’m sure that kiwis are ripped off in certain areas, given that most manufactured stuff comes from China for both the UK and NZ – and the British VAT is 20% and NZ’s GST is 15%. 
Paula finished her 1 hour lesson, well pleased and in two words, ‘informative’ and ‘inspiring’. Well worth the effort to get to Bournemouth a day early. She has also booked another lesson for the day of our return to Southampton, July 1st.
We returned to the hotel and on checking the emails, found that our ship tomorrow ‘due to operational reasons’ was now to be berthed at the QEII terminal, and not at the Mayflower. Pity, as the car rental depot is on the same road as the Mayflower and the QEII is not really within easy walking distance. The email came from our travel agent in NZ, so we wonder how many passengers embarking tomorrow won’t have had that message?
In bright sunshine, still, we turned right and headed into Bournemouth’s central square – which has been reconfigured over the years to eliminate most of the through traffic, making it more pedestrian friendly. Even though it was around midday, we passed one doorway where there were two people sleeping under a quilt! Bournemouth has quite a problem with people sleeping rough.
We found a friendly Costa’s and when the two staff found we were from NZ, they did a dance from the Disney film ‘Moana’!
We returned to the hotel to catch up on computer stuff (free Wi-Fi – without the restrictions of the Park Inn) and relaxed awhile before heading back to see brother Malc. This time, we didn’t go to a Wetherspoons, but to ‘The Curlew’ at West Parley.
Another good pasta for me that was supposed to have lobster, prawns and chorizo. Although tasty and the prawns were obvious, I can’t say that I found any lobster and the chorizo was broken up and also minimal.
Yet another pudding quest. Another steamed sponge pud billed as toffee apple. We asked for cream, but one came with custard – so Paula was happy enough, but the person in charge was adamant that he get us another, with pouring cream, so we ended up with four puds between three of us. We couldn’t polish it all off, even though Malc gave it a good go after demolishing his apple crumble.
Having said our farewells to Malc, with no future date planned to catch up again (sob, sob) we headed back to the Friday night at the Royal. When they said there was live music until midnight, they told fibs. We closed our single glazed sash window, as there were smokers just outside and below and eventually turned in about 11pm, with the music still going below us. It went on until 1am.
Never mind. Tomorrow we cruise for 28 days and at least we are pretty certain we’ll catch up with any lost sleep. No real rush to get out of bed in the morning either, as we are less than an hour away from Southampton.
No comments:
Post a Comment