We ran into almost all of the people we had met - our dining and tour companions - at some point during the departure - it was nice to be able to say goodbye one last time.
As in Australia when you leave a cruise, there was no-one checking passports, and unlike Australia, there was also no obvious Customs presence - the only exit is a "Nothing to Declare" lane, and there's a small sign on the wall saying that if you do have something to declare you're obliged to notify them via the 'red phone', which I couldn't see (not that I had anything to declare - there's no point trying to bring in anything exotic when you're coming back to Australia).
In the departure documentation they said that there would be taxis available but that they hoped people had pre-booked. We hadn't, and didn't, and nor did a lot of other people. However, it only took about half an hour to get to the head of the queue and we got to the car rental place fairly quickly - the traffic was nowhere near as chaotic as on the Saturday that we left on the cruise.
The car rental place however was totally disorganised. When I pre-book a car with Avis at home, I'm usually collecting it at the airport, the car and documentation is all ready when I get there. I just have to get into the car, drive to the exit where they check my licence to make sure I'm who I say I am, then it's all done.
Our experiences here with Thrifty have been quite different. I think we waited for almost an hour before we finally got the car, and it wasn't anything specific wrong with our booking, it was just too much work for too few staff, a computer system that wasn't functioning too well, and a long tedious process - they have to copy our drivers licences and our proof that we're planning to leave the country, I have to sign two sheets of paper in 5 places on each, and the whole thing just takes forever.
However, the car is exactly what I wanted - it's a Hyundai i30 and although it's a diesel (which I've always said I'll never buy because I want a car to accelerate when I put my foot on the accelerator!) it actually runs really nicely. Importantly it's not too big - I cannot get over how tiny the car parking spaces are everywhere we've been so far - while still being big enough to carry our luggage.
We're still having a bit of trouble with the GPS, although it only lost us once today and we still knew where we were :-)
I'm beginning to understand how frustrating driving in England can be - the traffic in Southampton wasn't too bad today, but in at least two places we were held up because people had parked by the side of the road, perfectly legally, but causing all the traffic to have to take turns. Do that at home and your car will be towed. Anyway, Southampton to Portsmouth was mostly on the motorway and for most of the trip we were doing the regulation 70mph and being passed constantly by people wanting to do the habitual 80 or so. But, a couple of miles out of Portsmouth it all came to a screaming halt and much of the last 5 or 6 miles was done at less than 5mph. I'm not aware of anything special on in Portsmouth today; it just seems to have been people going to Portsmouth for sightseeing or to catch a ferry - you can go to at least 5 different places on the ferry, mostly in France.
Paul is doing most (well ok all) of the driving, and he is getting quite frustrated by the lack of speed zone signs - for example, we were monstered over a toll bridge in Southampton by someone who wanted to go much faster and it can be really hard to know whether you're doing less than the speed limit, or whether the person beind actually just wants to break it (I think in this case it was the latter).
Anyway, we finally got to Portsmouth, and our hotel. Too early to check in, but we miraculously found a park in the hotel car park and they said it was fine to leave the car there until check-in time.
We then proceeded to walk about four miles up and down the seafront - to the Gunwharf Quays shopping centre for lunch, then back to the hotel to check in, then back past Gunwharf Quays to the Portsmouth Historical Dockyard. You could spend days here, but we only had a few hours, so we concentrated on the Mary Rose and the Victory.
We don't have many pictures of the Mary Rose - it's all indoors and although you can take photos you're not allowed to use a flash. There's an enormous amount of material on display, all recovered from the ship, as well as the ship itself of course.
The story of the Mary Rose is superficially similar to the Vasa that we saw in Stockholm, although the Mary Rose managed to serve for around 33 years before sinking; far longer than the Vasa's 20 minutes! The Mary Rose is nowhere near as complete as the Vasa - about half of the ship has been completely lost due to things like fungus and shipworm. However they are still working on trying to save what remains of it - they spent from 1994 to 2003 spraying it with some form of preservative, then from 2003 to 2010 spraying it with another form of preservative, and now they're drying it out, which will take a few more years yet. I gather though that they have learned from the unfortunate problems that I mentioned that the Vasa has had and so the parts of the Mary Rose that remain will be preserved effectively.
They say that they've recovered about 26000 items and a huge number are on display. The ship sank very quickly so a lot of things were found in a context that let them work out who the occupants of particular cabins were, the sort of work that person did and all the information they could find out about him - for example they have a number of display cases just about the Master Carpenter and his work and belongings. They have gone so far as to do facial reconstructions of a number of the sailors whose skeletons they have found. It's just amazing and we could definitely have spent more than a day just there.
The Victory is still a commissioned ship in the Royal Navy. It's in really good condition and you can walk through large parts of it.
After seeing these two and taking a few more pictures of some of the other ships on display, we then staggered back to the hotel.
We can't leave early tomorrow - we were going to as it's a fairly long drive to Hastings, but we found out from signs in the hotel that the streets around here are closed from 6am to something like 10 or 11 am tomorrow because of a triathlon, and it won't be possible to leave the hotel until they open again. They said we could leave the car out in the street away from the triathlon zone, but this is in a place where there are huge warning signs everywhere warning you about thefts from (and of) cars. I'd rather not lose the hire car on the first day! So, we're going to stay until a bit later - check-out time isn't until 12 noon - then head off to Hastings.
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