Portsmouth 15.08.2009

South West trains are doing the £10 day trip deal on their entire lines, so my colleague Zsuzsa tells me, so I booked my friend Judith who can be so spontaneous too and our tickets straight away on friday.

I seem to need to do spontaneous adventures very often and though I love London, I am under my own control in London for what to do and where to go, so I needed to go somewhere I have no control or feeling whatever, so Portsmouth is a random choice.

I even took my swimsuit but had no luck with the sun, it was windy and not warm enough for a dip. so we just sat on pebble beach and drank a nice bottle of Cava.

And as with almost ANY British coast, there's a pier, and amusement place, where we only went in to use the toilet, but of course the toilet is out of service, but we ended up stuck with a 2p coin machine.

I love coin games like good old times, some kids were keen to use the machine we were in, but we don't care, we spent good 50 minutes and £5 on it.

I couldn't believe Judith never has played this game.

I think it is a great fun and when can any 2p gives you this much pleasure and entertainment!? (we were stingy to play 10p version of this game)

Off we walk on Castle Road where we found a blue plate of Peter Sellers who lived here.

Then on Great Southsea Street, I found a pub Dan was recommending me to go, just by chance!

and how grateful I was, it's such a lovely pub! (Hall in the Wall is the name)

At first, people drinking outside were curious about us coming in, it's the air I tend to get when I am outside London and I get looked at and "who are you?! this is our local pub not for lousy tourists, not for foreigners!" kind of atmosphere.

But all was fine. The landlord was very nice, gave us some samples of ales before we sat happily with our Ales in our hands, admiring their wonderful ceiling works of all the ales they served, over 100. (see the pic)

We got tipsy on our way home on the train, but friendly guy at the station insists on giving us a can of beer to enjoy onboard.

Great time to spend outside London sometimes when we just need some new air, I am happy being a tourist in London too, I still remember the buzz of this city of creativity, arts, beautiful shambles, grey cold sky, milky tea, etc from 18 years ago when I decided to live here.

By the way, British coasts are so beautiful you can stare for ages.

This one particularly resembles a bunch of tree patterns.