DAY 40 SUNDAY MAY 3 - SOUTHAMPTON AT LAST

After 39 days living on the Queen Mary 2 we finally arrived at Southampton and everyone was excited.  We got up at 5:30am and went outside to watch the three Queens berthing.  Sort of a birthday party for the new royal, who may end up with one or two names in common with them.  It was cold, wet and foggy and an Englishman told us he had missed this type of weather.  The Elizabeth was quite close to us as we docked but the Victoria was ahead and lost in the fog.

All three were completing a world tour that started in early January and docked at 6:30.  As we are travelling light we decided to carry our own luggage off the ship, while most people had huge suitcases that needed to be handled by porters.  We booked a taxi for 10am as there was not much point in arriving at the hotel early.  So we relaxed in the Queen's Ballroom until 9am, hoping most people would have gone by them.  Sadly we found a long queue of people waiting at the gangway because the wind had moved the ship such that the tower type gangway started to separate and they took forty minutes to repair it.

We breezed past the hundreds of huge cases still on the wharf and made it to our taxi.  Our driver told us he was a tour guide for the walk around the old city wall and recommended the 1:30pm tour.  That sounded just like our first day in York in 2012.  The hotel allowed us into our room immediately so we were back on track.

First priority was to find the railway station, where we held up the queue by reserving seats on trains for four separate days in England.  The man could not believe we wanted to travel to Cambridge via Birmingham, but when we explained we were maximising use of our very expensive Britrail passes and were having a train-centred holiday for Aussies he rose to the challenge and gave us a little pile of reservation cards to see us through the next two weeks.

We crossed the road to Costa to celebrate and Lyn had her first capuccino  in weeks and Malcolm had a sticky toffee creamy cooler (they do not sell lime milkshakes).  We arrived at the Bar Gate  (literally gate street) at 12:30 and the guide was there for the 1:30 tour but we decided to follow the signs ourselves and save ten pounds.  Not quite as good as York, but very interesting and we took plenty of photos.

We found ourselves on the waterfront where the wall petered out and saw the QM 2 at Dock 4, which gave us some hope we could walk from the hotel to the ship on August 11 for our Atlantic crossing.  We eventually found a small opening between the big buildings where we could see the Queen Elizabeth and the river.  We decided we would return to that spot at 5pm to watch the three Queens depart.

Finding somewhere to leave our fancy clothes till we return was proving a problem.  Cunard were willing to hold our suit bag at the terminal for a cost of US150.  A souvenir shop in town had a sign advertising this service and quoted 45 pounds.  When we got back to the hotel our friendly Receptionist Arthur agreed to hold it for nothing.

At 4:15 we walked back to the waterfront and stood in the freezing wind for an hour and a half to witness the once in a lifetime cavalcade of Queens down the river.  Warmed up with a Subway 12 inch and returned to make up for lost time using the unlimited wifi in our room.