Last Day in the UK

Location: Woolston, Southampton, England
Status: Alive and Healthy

I have been here since Thursday, and I catch a ferry this evening from Portsmouth to Le Havre, France. It is an overnight ferry, so tomorrow morning, I will be in France on my way to Rouen.

I left off in Winchester. I wound up staying there at Ali's place until Thursday, when I cycled down here. It wasn't that far of a ride. Ali, and just about everyone else there are art students at the Winchester School of art, and it was an interesting group of people to hang out with. Around 18:00 on Tuesday, the first year students had an exhibition of their work, and there was a lot of interesting stuff, as well as some not so interesting stuff. As I mentioned before, I don't usually "get" modern art. One which caught my eye was, I thought, as brilliant idea with a very simple implementation. It was a series of Google Image Searches for the various human emotions.

After that, we all hung out at the Student Union until it closed. The next day, Ali showed me around Winchester a little bit. We also did some shopping, and I bought a tent which will hopefully take care of me on those stretches where I don't have any couches to surf. She showed me the Winchester Cathedral, Jane Austin's house, a good bit of downtown, etc. It is a very pretty old town. Then she left me to wander on my own while she did some research in the library, and we met up later for Nick's exhibition. Again, some of the pieces were rather interesting and others were kind of... well, I'm not a modern art critic...

Anyway, on Thursday, Ali had to head up to London, but I stuck around taking care of things until the afternoon and then cycled down here.

I arrived in the evening and called my next host, Nick. He wasn't home, but his roommate was, and he gave me directions and then let me in. The time here in Southampton has mostly been spent relaxing. On Thursday night, Nick, Chris (his roommate), and I went to a local pub for a few pints and hung out talking. On Friday I pretty much lounged around while Nick was working, and then I cooked my increasingly popular Garlic Parmesan Shrimp pasta. Saturday, Nick and I went into town to his university where we booked ferry tickets and then walked around a bit. The area near the university is rather beautiful with a very large park running through most of it. That evening, Nick had to work at the pub, but near the end of the night, Chris and I went down and met him and had a few pints. It was Soul & Motown Disco night...woo! Sunday was another fairly lazy day finished off by an evening at the pub.

In just a few moments, we are going to drive down to Portsmouth, where Nick will drop me off at the ferry terminal, and then I will probably spend several hours writing in my journal.

Next time I post, I'll be in France.

Cheers.