Coffee and Conversation Holiday 2008
Location: Southampton
Date: September 2008
As most of you will know this is our second coffee holiday and we are in Southampton staying with our Little Sister Sylvia. There are 5 of us on this holiday, and we will be traveling around the south west to show our friends some interesting places and historic venues as well as fun locations, all of which will be in this 2008 holiday report.
Days Out.
Monday 8th September
Today we all went to Portsmouth. The first place we visited was Fort Nelson on top of Portsdown hill. This Fort is home to the Royal Amouries and the museum is all about the use and manufactoring of guns, not small ones but big buggers. It was very interesting. Lesley and myself have been before but we took David, Hanne and Sylvia there and they enjoyed their visit, we have taken photo`s of our time there some of which which you can see below.
The highlight of our day must be a visit into Portsmouth and a trip up the Spinnaker Tower, which is 170 metres high and the views are amazing. The lift ascends at 4 metres per second, very fast. There are some pictures from the top of this structure which I think will be of interest to some of you.
Hanne has been cooking some Danish dishes as well so we are having a culinary experience to go with all the sightseeing. Please keep looking in this website for the ongoing saga of this holiday so you can see what we have been doing. We have been taking video as well as stills, and we will be making a slideshow for you all to see when our holiday has come to a close.
Tuesday 9th:
Day relaxing, working on the computers and general chilling out.
Wednesday 10th
Today we all went to the Otter & Owl Centre near Southampton. We have visited this centre before but it is always a pleasure to return at different times of year as there are changes all year round, so it is not always the same. Later we went to Beaulieu village and had ice cream and a look round, nice place but very expensive as usual. On the way home we went to a pub, The Bold Forester, for a meal, that was very good value, and all enjoyed it...more pics taken so keep looking at the site.
Thursday 11th:
Today we went back to Portsmouth just to photogragh the HMS Victory, Lord Nelson`s Flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. We have taken lots of pictures again some of which you can see here.
Friday 12th.
Another Day taking it easy after the day yesterday.
Saturday 13th.
Today Hanne, Lesley and myself went into Winchester. We visited the Great Hall where the round table is, an amazing building. We then had coffee and a bap with sausage in then went to the Cathedral and spent some time in there taking lots of pictures and looking at the wonderful architecture, a very inspiring building considering it was built in the middle ages.
Sunday & Monday 14th & 15th.
Both days we have chilled out, we have an early start tomorrow as we are going over to the Isle Of Wight for the day, as usual I will post pictures of our day and then you will be able to see for yourselves what sort of time we had on the island.
Tuesday 16th.
Today we went on our trip to the Isle Of Wight, boarded the Red Funnel Ferry, Red Falcon, and departed at 10am, arrived East Cowes at 11am, then onto Osborne House. Osborne was one of the homes of Queen Victoria, it was designed by Prince Albert, or Bert as his friends called him, History tells that Osborne House was the favourite home of the Queen as it gave her the opportunity to be with her husband and children in more informal surroundings, we had a great time going around the House and then we took a mini bus down to the Swiss Cottage which is where their children, the Princes and Pricesses played and learned how to cook and enjoy what we would call normal activities that their father insisted they learn. all in all a very nice day out, got back to Sylvia's by 7.45pm.
Friday 19th. Last day in Southampton.
As you will notice there was no entry for Wednesday or Thursday as these we had just chilling out and doing the website, But today Lesley,Hanne and myself went to Stonehenge and Salisbury,Hanne wanted to see the rocks of Stonehenge as I call them and it fullfiled her wish to see them, Sylvia decided to stay at home and catch up with some cleaning and then to take things a bit easy, after leaving Stonehenge we drove onto Salisbury and visited the Cathedral, it to is a wonderful building just like Winchester and the medieval craftmanship is something to behold, we also took the opportunity to have a cream tea in the cafeteria, which was yummy, then on to a tour of the Cathedral itself, as you can see we took photo's, too many to put into this page but you get the idea of what it was like for us,we had a very enjoyable time there and then returned to Southampton. Sadly this was our last night with Sylvia and it is always an emotional time when we have to leave each others company after having spent some time enjoying the friendships that we have made, but there is always another time when we will see each other again, and we look forward to that.
Saturday 20th September, Back home to London, Take Hanne with us as she is flying back to Denmark tomorrow.
Arrived home and Lesley took Hanne for a walk aroung our local area, they went to Boston Manor Park and then along the canal, I think they enjoyed themselves by what I have seen through their pictures, It was a fitting finale to our 2008 holiday, and I sincerely hope you have enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading the diary.
And in Conclusion
I would like to finish by saying a big thank you to Sylvia for inviting us to spend time with her in her home, we all enjoyed our holiday with you Little Sister a big kiss and a hug to you,Also a big thank you and a hug for my other Little Sister Hanne from Copenhagen for joining us again on our holiday, and last but not least Lesley my lovely wife who has put up with me for 24 years on Monday 22nd, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY SWEETHEART.And of course I would also like to say a huge thank`s to my younger Bruv David for teaching me to be able to put this holiday diary in the website, as well as that it was great to have had the opportunity to spend a week with him and to get to know one another better, by the way everyone he also is the Webmaster of this site and he does a great job looking after it and keeping it up to date.I hope that by visiting this site it may have given some of our friends a taste of what it is like to come over and finally meet and spend time with good friends you have made over the Internet. And finally a heartfelt thanks to those of you who have looked at our site and put in some very nice comments in the guest book, we appreciate it very much when you take the time to put an entry in there,and we look forward to reading every one that you have written.Once again I hope you have enjoyed our CoffeenConversation Holiday 2008 Diary and we look forward to talking to you very soon, take care our dear friends till we meet again. THE COFFEENCONVERSATION TEAM.
