Day 4 - Southampton - 15 August

Off to Southampton today - it's only about 30 miles from Bournemouth and unlike the other driving we've done, a lot of this was on proper motorway - only 4 or 5 roundabouts in the whole trip instead of 1 every mile which was about the average on our previous drives.

We arrived way too early to check in to the hotel, so we parked the car in a shopping centre car park and had a look around.

We hadn't really planned to do much sight-seeing here, but while wandering, we saw what was obviously part of an old wall in the distance and went off to have a look at it.  Turns out it was part of an old defensive wall built in the 1300s to add to a pre-existing wall.  

Needless to say we then wandered around looking at different parts of the wall and other historical displays around the city.  This is a Tudor house:

And this is a lane-way - Blue Anchor Lane - that used to be one of the main ways of getting goods from the docks into the city:

Between exploring the old city, and the walk back to the hotel after dropping off the hire car, we walked quite a long way today.

Speaking of hire cars, they're paranoid about damage to them here.  I knew this, but now I've seen it for myself.  When we first picked the car up, as you'd expect they took my credit card details so they could take the 1000 pound excess if we were to have an accident. But, they also made me pay a 150 pound deposit as well, even though I had already fully prepaid for the rental.  Then, when we returned it, they spent at least 10 minutes checking it to ensure that we hadn't damaged it - not just body work but all around the inside and underneath as well.  I've never seen such a thing at home.  However, they assured me that they found the car to be in good condition and that we'll get the deposit back.  Maybe it was just because we're foreigners and renting with them for the first time - we'll see if it's any different when we get back from the cruise as we're hiring another car from the same company then.

Our hotel is right beside the dock that the cruise ship leaves from tomorrow - this is the Regent Seven Seas Voyager pulling out of the spot that our ship will be docking at early tomorrow morning.  

The Seven Seas Voyager is a whole step up in luxury from our ship - it has a maximum of only 700 passengers, all of the cabins are suites and all have balconies.  Sounds really nice but of course it's somewhat dearer :-)