Greetings from Southampton, a refreshingly green, cool, damp and friendly place. Our one night stay at the Doubletree Hilton here has been one of the best hotel nights in memory. The staff are all…lovely, as they say here. So polite and accommodating. The room was excellent, the food and bar the same. All the power plugs have standard 120 VAC (UK plugs), USB, and USB C. I’ll make sure to write them a glowing online review, published somewhere with a few more viewers than BLTN.

After three somewhat tough travel days, tough even with the design to avoid any rushing around, this afternoon we board the Queen Mary 2. I’m looking forward to unpacking and relaxing, even if it is inside a giant floating COVID oven. I’m sure connectivity will be sporadic, so I have books and movies squirreled away on the laptop for those times when I don’t feel like doing any of the cruise-ish things.

There’s a longer story to be written about the journey we took yesterday into the English wilds – Salisbury (not so wild) and standing stones among cows at the National Heritage Site near Avebury. But that will have to wait.