Day 11 Tue. Nov. 3

57 F,. Less wet, but cold

(Len)

Skipped breakfast this morning in favour of heading over to the Intercafe to read mail. Spent an hour there with no real crises except Patricia realizing we'd booked my Boston trip to miss the Xmas party.. D'oh! We then headed off to Harrods. Shopped for an hour or so. Nice place. Bought some trinkets and a bear. (Originally for Adri, but Harold become "real" while traveling with us, so she gets the china QE2 cups instead). Then back to the hotel about noon to pick up the bags and take a tube trip to Waterloo Station.
We got there with very little hassle, and found a train to Southampton was leaving in 10 mins. Got on and we left at 13:10. Uneventful trip, but lots of cellphones (sometimes it seemed as thought we were the only people in the British Isles _without_ a cell phone) Arrived So'ton about 14:45 then walked a mile uphill to the TIC. Much to our chagrin at the time, all the hotels there were full due to a graduation!! Got a place in the sticks called Granby Manor in Ashurst, 6 miles outside Southampton. It was gorgeous! and the owners (Beryl and Morrie Veal) were super! First place we had to have a shared bathroom, but it wasn't bad at all.
Called Matt Staples after we got settled. Adri sent him some sort of cryptic messages that we HAD to see before we left so we took the bus back to town. Found a nice pub (JD Wetherspoons) and had a drink to wait. Met Matt and BS'd for a couple of hours . Had dinner then went to search out a bus back to the B&B. Couldn't find one so we just took a cab. The room was really nice and we slept in until 7:15 the next morning.