Friday October 19th / Saturday October 20th

On our way to Southampton, we visited Kingston Lacy, a lavish family home built to resemble an Italian Palace, with large gardens to explore.  There were MANY paintings, and even a room full of a private collection of ancient Egyptian artefacts.

The gardens were segmented into their own areas, one of which was a recently restored Japanese garden.  There was plenty to see, and there was even an Egyptian obelisk and a sarcophagus outside.  I thought it was rather nice to be able to touch the sarcophagus actually :)

The clouds gathered and we had a drizzle as we left.  We went through part of the New Forest on the way to my cousins who live in Southampton, Paul and Julie.  We arrived after 4pm, and we had a good long chat! We had fisn and chips for dinner (how British are we?), followed by cheesecake, watched TV and chatted some more until bedtime.

In the morning, we had a breakfast involving croissants with jam (nom nom nom) and despite the weather - it wasn't raining but the ground was VERY wet - we went for a walk around the area, around the harbour which was only just down the road really, and we also learned that there are TWO tides a day here!  We stopped off at a cafe for a hot drink and moved from there into a pub for lunch before leaving for home.