Isle of Wight

April 2-4, 2010

Upon our return from Egypt we decided to stay and sightsee in southern England for the weekend. Our flight landed on Friday evening and so it just made sense. This trip we focused on the Portsmouth area and the Isle of Wight.

Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight

Saturday

Scott had heard of a WW2 museum in Portsmouth. I suppose that we are beginning to become connoisseurs of war museums since we have visited so many... and therefore this one was good but not outstanding.
We then caught the ferry over to the Isle of Wight. It is a large island Southwest of London. An interesting rock formation sticks out from it's coastline that is called "the needles".


It has always served as a lighthouse, but during WW2 it also served as a missile as well as a rocket launch site for post war Britain. The weather didn't cooperate with us but neither rain, nor snow, nor cold would deter us (okay a bit over-dramatic...)

Cool tunnel out to the light house cave.

We just barely caught the early ferry back to Portsmouth!
The kids were seriously concerned about dinner and what we were going to eat so we ordered take-out pizza and gyros. When we travel... we travel in style! (not)... but at least we had happy kids and comfortable beds!

How can we get so tired while on vacation?


Easter Sunday
Arundel Castle

It seemed that we should have been at church. But we were in southern England and didn't know where to go. Our solution... go to a castle! Arundel Castle was featured in the recent movie "the Young Queen Victoria". It is amazing how the castles seem to be so similar after awhile. But this was a nice castle that is actually still occupied by royalty.

Since it was Easter weekend they had a special medieval show with knight and horse demonstrations. We also got to watch how they cooked and even made armor! Quite interesting!

We then walked through the castle and got a few good castle pictures.

It was a good trip... but we were definitely ready to go home to our own beds.