First full day in the UK and it was off to Portsmouth for us. Portsmouth is the traditional home of the Royal Navy and the center of British naval history and for us, one of those places on the bucket list for the UK that we just had to visit so off we went in a rented car. And of course, at the same time we got a good introduction to driving in the UK… 🙂 After about two hours driving (including a few missed turns), we found our hotel, checked in, and were now off to the historic waterfront.

Portsmouth is an interesting mix of old and new. Above is the newly completed high-tech aircraft carrier the HMS Prince of Wales and below is the HMS Victory, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. Here’s a couple of pictures that we got of the ship:

Here’s a better picture borrowed from Wikipedia:

You may ask “What happened to the sales and the mast tops?” We did too and the answer is that the ship’s structure, as it currently exists, can’t hold the full weight of complete masts and further restoration work needs to be done- apparently that’s somewhere in the works but that’s all we know at t his time. And now for the man himself, Admiral Nelson:

We toured the ship and while it was fascinating, it was also very painful to walk because of the very low ceilings- we both had to walk at a crouch the entire time and it was extremely uncomfortable. It’s definitely NOT the place for people over 5 feet tall.

(To be continued)