Cheers to the Weekend!

Gabel and I had such a great weekend! Here's our lowdown:

Friday night we cooked up a feast. Pork steak sandwiches and poutine. Just amazing. Then we got dressed up and went to the bar called The Encore which is literally right beside our building. It was pretty busy in there and when it was my turn to go get drinks it took quite a long time. When I came back to our table, I could see four guys sitting with Gabel. They ranged in age from 21-46 and were absolutely fascinated with our accents. We tolerated them for a bit since they were buying us drinks and got engaged in conversations about the differences between Canada and the UK. They also enlightened us on a few British things such as the proper way to pronounce certain words and cities here and they did confirm our suspicion that football (soccer) is not very popular amongst women here. They said its a man thing and that watching football is something that they can do without their wives. Interesting! It won't stop us from going to another game though. Go Saints!! Anyways the pub closed down at 11 and we went our separate ways. We packed it in after that because we had a full day of exploring planned for Saturday.

On Saturday we caught the 10:24 train from Southampton to a place called Lymington which is on the outskirts of Southampton but right on the ocean. From there we took a ferry to the Isle of Wight (I know, I'm always on this island!!). This ferry was VERY slow since it had to manoeuvre through very tight harbours with lots of boats and because it was a car ferry so it had quite a big load. After 40 minutes we landed in Yarmouth which is a very beautiful and quaint harbour town. Yarmouth is on the far west side of the island and up until this point I had only explored the east side so this was nice. We were pretty hungry for lunch at this point and walked into a restaurant right on the water called Salty's. Judging from the name and appearance, we thought it would be a cute, cheap little place to get fish and chips. Unfortunately when we went inside we could see that it was quite fancy. And then when they brought us our menu's we were blown away by the prices. A plate of fish and chips was 15 pounds!! That's 25 Canadian dollars! We sat there for awhile debating what to do. The waitress came over and asked for our order and I said we needed more time. What we really wanted to do was bolt out of there since we could NOT afford that but it would be horribly embarrassing. In the end when we thought the coast was clear we ran out and began a quest for a new restaurant. It was a good thing we did too. We stumbled upon the cutest restaurant called The Blue Crab and they had fish and chips for just over 5 pounds! Perfect. So we each ordered a plate and as an appetizer we got the crab guacamole. All the food was AMAZING. I could eat that crab guacamole every day and the fish was unreal. It was a cod fillet probably about ten inches long. It was hanging off the plate. They had homemade tartar sauce too that was unreal. It was my first plate of fish and chips here and I'm so glad it was at that restaurant. After lunch we caught one of the tour buses that did the Needles Tour. The bus comes every 30 minutes and does lots of stops along the way so you can get off and explore and then hop on another bus. For those of you who don't know what Needles is, you should google it because it's really beautiful. Gabel and I had such a great day exploring the ocean and the breathtaking views along the Needles tour. We got off at the first stop which was in a small town called Freshwater Bay. Gabel found a trail that we went down that was literally deserted. It went through a farming field and all of a sudden it came to what I can only describe as the edge of the world. We found ourselves standing on huge cliffs that had no guard rails that looked down onto the ocean with a beach below. It was a massssssssive drop down the cliffs but the views were certainly stunning. I think part of what made it so epic was that it was a very cloudy, foggy and windy day. We took a photo shoot there and then walked over to the main beach and explored there a bit. Once we got on the next bus, we got off at Needles Battery. The ride up to the battery produced incredible views as well and we were happy that we were on double decker topless bus because we could take great pictures. The Needles battery is a preserved old military fort that still has cannons and all the old fort walls and tunnels. And of course it has the best views of the actual Needles rocks and lighthouse. We took plenty of pictures here and explored the tunnels. After the battery, we took the bus to Needles Park which is much more touristy. There's a boardwalk that has shops, ice cream parlours, a glassblowing factory, rides, and the famous chairlift. We took the chairlift from the top of the cliffs down to the beach and the whole time you can see Needles in the distance. The beach itself is amazing. You're walking along the ocean, the beach is a rock beach made up of tons of coloured pebbles, and the whole thing is surrounded by tall cliffs that all change colours. Again, many photos taken here, and then we caught our bus and went back to Yarmouth. We were exhausted after so much exploring and we slept the whole ferry ride back to Lymington. When we got home it was almost 8pm and we cooked up some ham and grilled cheese for dinner. Our original plan had been to go clubbing because we hadn't had a chance yet but we were soooo tired. We definitely toyed with the idea of not going out and just getting into comfy clothes and watching TV but we didn't want everyone to make fun of us for being old and lame and not going clubbing here yet! So we sucked it up and started our predrink, blasted some tunes and got all dolled up. We didn't leave our place till 1am but it's not a big deal because in Europe the clubs are open all night. We walked to Bedford Place which is the clubbing district of Southampton and I would say it's about a 5-7 minute walk from our flat. We picked a place called Junk but they were having a special DJ that night so we had to pay 15 pounds each for cover. It's such a different experience here than back home. The club was so dark and it's like a rave. The DJ's do their thing and the dance floor is just packed with people dancing like crazy and it's soooo hot. The music is very different but I actually loved it. The club was open till 6am but we called it quits around 3am. That's all us Canadian girls could handle! We'll have to practice staying out all night like the Europeans haha. We walked home, made a snack and passed out hard around 3:30am.

Then today was a nice lazy day. We slept in until 12:30 and walked to the mall to go to our favourite place called Shakeaway. We each bought a large shake to cure our hangover. I've fallen in love with the chocolate raspberry one and finished it pronto. Then we grabbed some Subway sammies and crawled into Gabel's bed to watch eat and watch the Office. We stayed like that for a couple of hours but then went into productive mode and showered, cleaned our flat, bought our train tickets for work tomorrow, made supper, took down the garbage, etc. We also secured a futon today! We bought it used off a website called Gumtree (the British kijiji) and it was only 40 pounds. For an extra ten pounds, the woman selling it delivered it right to our doorstep. It's blue which obviously does not go with our red carpet and pink moonchairs but we have a futon in the living room!! Woo!! Now we are both blogging in our rooms but our entire building complex just lost power so we are sitting in our rooms in the dark. I hope they figure out the power soon. I need to charge my phone for tomorrow and we wake up so early that its usually still dark out so getting ready would be a challenge. Stay tuned for an update on the power! And check out all our fabulous pics from the weekend below: