Southampton, England

Thanks to Kazzie for planning out our day for us. It was really helpful and worked out great!

We arrived on the Queen Victoria and left in the afternoon on the Queen Mary 2. We got a cab from the port and left to spend the day at Beaulieu Abby, Beaulieu Palace and Motor Museum. We had a great cab driver who also came back to pick us up and took us touring in the area.

The Motor Museum has about 250 cars with examples from the 1890s to legendary record breakers.We wandered around the grounds and enjoyed a beautiful spring day in England.

There was also an area devoted to The Secret Army Exhibition which tells the story of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. This was the main or maybe only training camp for them. I wish I would have had another hour to spend there. I am looking forward to ordering the book about it when I return home.

Much of the 13^th century Beaulieu Abbey was destroyed during the reign of Henry the VIII, but was still quite interesting.

The Palace House has been the family home of the Montagu Family since 1538.The bells in the picture below were on the wall in the kitchen to show who was ringing for service.As we were leaving, this group of school kids arrived to tour and was dressed in period costume.

Our ride back to the port was through the New Forest, a 145 square mile nature reserve that was originally designated as a hunting reserve by William the Conqueror in 1079. There were many ponies, donkeys and cattle roaming free, often standing on the road.

Derrick also took us the Boat Yard and marina at Buckler's Hard and Jeff walked around checking it out while I did some text messaging to Roscoe, who had sent us a fond farewell from the train station. It sure is hard to say goodbye to all of our new friends. Liz and Ellen, check out the prop guard on the first picture. You could have used one of those. (FUNNY!)

We arrived at the port and boarded the Queen Mary 2 for our return trip to New York. The lines were long and slow. We would have had a much easier time if we had stayed and boarded with the other “in transit” passengers form the Queen Victoria, but we really enjoyed our day.

We went out on deck with our champagne for sail away. This was another special day because all 3 Queen were in Port. QE2 was in wet dock getting some kind of refurbishment, and she hadn't been supposed to be there. The last meeting of the Queens was supposed to be in New York on our sail away.

We took off first and went up the river passing the Queen Victoria and then the Queen Elizabeth 2. Passengers and crew were lining the decks, music was playing and the ships horns were blaring. People were once again lining the shores and boats were surrounding us.

We saw many friends from the Queen Victoria onboard, about 350 of the full world cruisers were taking her back to the US as well as some of the segment cruisers. Marty and Darrel.Jeff and Elaine wave goodbye to the Queen Victoria.

We passed the QE 2 and the crew was going wild. No passengers were aboard. Notice the crew peeking out the doors was at the bottom of the ship.

It was a great send off for our last 6 days of our World Cruise. We set off across the Atlantic.