Drive on the left...drive on the left...all the way to Southampton

It was time to say goodbye to London and expand our U.K. adventures. The first stop was Southampton, to visit our long-time friend and Dave's former roommate, Tamas, and visit with his girls.

Our 9 passenger van

Alas, we quite underestimated the difficulty of exiting London by car. I'd do it again, but give myself two more hours than we planned! Exiting the Airbnb, walking with luggage and kids to the car rental and returning the Airbnb key was an adventure in itself. Getting the car from Hertz was unexpectedly lengthy and in the end, as anticipated, we had a monstrous nine-passenger van. We couldn't size down to a seven-seater as nearly all those wouldn't actually fit six suitcases plus six people. So, monstrous van it was, and Dave fearlessly took the helm as Christine monitored Google maps on our several hour journey out of London.


Lesson 1: Don't take any short cuts...they'll be narrow and really only have one lane for the two-way traffic. Better to just stick to the main highways, even if there's traffic. Side streets are confusing at best and harrowing at worst.

Lesson 2: Roundabouts are everywhere, they go the other way round (clockwise) and they have outer lanes and inner lanes to navigate. Sometimes they even have traffic lights just to confuse you!

Lesson 3: It's really best not to miss your exit. While I dislike swerving to catch an exit you were about to miss, we soon found the downside of missing your exit. It was typically a ten-minute detour to get to the next exit/roundabout, turn around and come back! Highway exits were not closely spaced and while the path navigated for us was not straight, apparently it was still the fastest option, no matter how many wrong turns we took.

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In the end, we succeeded in meeting up with Tamas and his daughters in Southampton and spent a wonderful weekend with them. So nice to be able to play games with all of us together!

We enjoyed a giant playground (with equally giant swings), 

yummy Indian food (much spicier here than in the States!), several games (including Monopoly Ultra Edition and Ticket to Ride Europe), 

 

a traditional Sunday roast for lunch, 

a lovely walk/hike in New Forest National Park, exactly what I imagine Robin Hood's looked like, complete with the hooligans in the forest.

  

 

We finished the evening off with a pizza dinner and a Sunday night church service. It was great to catch up with Tamas and for our boys to play with his daughters. What a perfect weekend!