It wasn’t all that late in the afternoon when Miriam and I exited the upper floor of John Lewis in Southampton to be confronted by a street full of holiday decoratins, booths some of which were selling gift things and others the range of sweets, carinval foods, or beverages. Right – holiday markets. I don’t remember seeing many like this when I worked here in the UK where as they are extremely common over the extent of German speaking Europe. Miriam took some pictures, I didn’t so will add a few from her probably later.
Admittedly the store had the usual extent of gifts, decorations, toys, and wrappings on sale but still – I somehow hadn’t expected the market. We wandered it for a while; there was hot chocolate available as well as waffles, schnitzel, serveal vegetarian offerings, beer. Lots of beer, but I didn’t see any mulled wines. Still, we were both tired so picked up sandwich wraps and headed back to the hotel. It will be an early night, probably with an even earlier wake up…
It had been still light when we disembarked from the National Express bus in Southampton just before 1600. Miriam had gone into London for the morning to see an old schoold friend. We met back at the hotel where I had checked out and quietly enjoyed sitting in the lobby. Catching the bus at T4 turned out to be rather simple, just walk back through the covered way from the hotel, take the lift down to the arrivals are and cross out to the pick up area (Bus stops 11-14).
For anyone who is interested – houses and flowers are starting to appear.
