Today we decided to attempt to go to the Isle of Wight and see the sites. We drove to Lymington and hopped onto the passenger & car ferry to Yarmouth. Once there, we took a bus to Newport and then another to Osborne House. It was nice not having to drive! On the bus ride between Newport and Osborne House, I sat next to a chatty lady who lived there but originated from London. She had a proper cockney accent, which had crossed into a thick 'coun-tree' brogue so Mel and Jenny didn't really understand her… She was bemoaning that she couldn't see Ventnor or Sandown because they didn't have a harbour for her to dock her yacht and, upon finding out I was from London, started a tirade against the bombers of 7/7 and hoped nobody I knew was a victim.
Once at Osborne House it was already 1pm so we headed into the restaurant. The menu is two pages and eight items on page one are the food items. All the others are drinks. The food items consisted of soup and bread, egg and watercress sandwiches, poached salmon sandwiches… Yep, just soup and sandwiches, none of which sounded particularly appealing or filling. In the end, Jenny and I plumped for tomato soup and Melissa had the seafood mix soup. The soup tasted like the juice out of tinned plum tomatoes – bitty, watery, and pretty gross. I'm so hungry I eat it all anyway. Apparently the seafood mix soup wasn't all that wonderful either… The peach and passionfruit cordial drink was nice though… but didn't compensate. This is very bad food karma!! I'm still hungry and have digested tinned tomato juice. Not happy bunnies, we rate the food quality and choice as 'poor' on the comments card, adding that they should get 'real food'.
We left hungry and annoyed, and slowly walked around Osborne House, taking in the glorious décor, the intricately designed ceilings, and the brilliant views of the gardens from all directions. One room contained the Royal Family tree, and it demonstrated how Victoria and Albert attempted to marry off their children throughout Europe to ensure peace between the countries… You could also clearly see how Elizabeth II and Prince Philip are first cousins as well as husband and wife…! No wonder the children of Elizabeth II and Philip are a little weird – they're a bunch of in-breds!
After wandering around the gardens and quickly making out way through the Walled Gardens, we headed back to the bus stop, grabbed our two buses, and hopped back on to the IOW ferry to the mainland. Back at the chalet, we are incredibly hungry and open the Thai Chilli crisps and shortcake biscuits, and cook potato croquettes to snack on before dinner! I cooked sweet 'n' sour rice with southern fried chicken fingers which was eagerly devoured, and we spent the evening doing crosswords and playing the Friends game. Well, not exactly playing but reading out the questions and laughing at them and our own answers!! It was fun.
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