London to Southampton via the Southern Express Train

We didn’t post yesterday due to the fact that it was a down day. We needed to finalize our travel plans for today and we had to use up our free chicken dinner from Nando’s. So we shopped, mailed packages via the Royal Mail, ate one last time at Nando’s, shopped some more and then spent quite a bit of time arguing with American Express about them freezing our card due to identity theft. Which there wasn’t and I had already notified them of our travel plans but since we moved and then used our card in Europe they said that was a common scam so they froze our card! And for anyone’s information it is nearly impossible to call collect from the UK! I don’t know what one would do if it was a true emergency.


Today we checked out and headed to our nearby Tube station which we just recently found a shortcut too. After going down quite a few stairs carrying our suitcases, backpack, purse and small suitcase we got on the Tube to take us to the train station.

Then upon arrival at the train station we reversed everything and carried up our luggage quite a lot of stairs and down through hallways until we reached the station.

There is no better people watching than in a train station. Thousands of people of all nations, race & culture pass through the train station. Some are very smartly dressed, some are not at all smartly dressed & some just look plain lost. Since trains don’t post the platform until about 15 minutes before leaving everyone is always looking up at the board.

Our train finally posted and we found the right carriage. Our train has 8 carriages and the first 4 will go onto Southampton and the last 4 divide off somewhere so we had to make sure that we were on one of the first 4 or we would be headed somewhere else. How fun!!

Our destination is Southampton which is the cruise port for the start of our cruise. We will stay here 3 days, look around a bit and then board the ship on Sunday.

Our time in London was great. We saw and did everything we wanted to do and rested when we wanted to. London is such a cultural melting pot of humanity. There is absolutely no way to know who is a born Londoner or a transplanted one if there is such a thing as a true Londoner. But we are excited to move on and see new places of interest.

Well we arrived  at our hotel and there is no air conditioning but they brought up a fan. We are headed to the local Mall that promises to be about as American as can be. We are exhausted from our trip and will probably call it an early night. Print this post