In front of the Victory

Melissa, Sarah and I in Portsmouth

So today was another Wednesday trip and this time our destination was Portsmouth, Hampshire. It was so much fun and there was so much to see at Harbor, tons of history and neat things. We started our adventure at 8 this morning since it was a two hour bus ride and we needed to be there at ten. I didnt really like having to get up at 6am to get ready but it was all totally worth it. Melissa and I sat on the bus together and we both tried to be so good and do our homework on the way there but we just ended up sleeping most of the way.

Portsmouth was amazing! There is so much history packed in this Harbor and I really had a lot of fun! We started out by going to the Mary Rose Museum. The Mary Rose was Henry VIII favorite ship that sank exactly 498 years ago. In the 60's some people set out to find it and see if there was anything left to raise. They ended up finding the starboard side of the ship completely intact! It took them until the 80's and 90's to finally raise it because it was really hard to dig it our of 500 years of silt and mud, plus they had to be really careful. They think that between 500-700 people sank with the ship and died.

After that we stopped and ate lunch and then continued on into the Naval Museum. It was really interesting and I learned a little bit about women in the British Navy. After that we went to see the Victory.

The Victory was the ship that lead the British Navy in the Battle of Trafalgar. It is where Vice-Admiral Lord Nelson died. He was shot just 30 minutes after the Victory penetrated the combined French and Spanish fleet. The ship is really cool and we got to walk all over the upper and middle decks and got to go down into the hold. When you are close to the ship it looks just like the ship at the end of Pirates of the Caribbean.

After that we went into the preservation room where they are working to preserve the part of the Mary Rose that they rose. It was amazing. They have been spraying it with a preservation wax since 1994 and are not going to finish that until later this year. After that it has to go through a really intensive drying process that could last until 2016. Its crazy but I guess that after a ship has been sunk after 500 years that its kind of important to follow such measures.

After that we headed out to take the Harbor tour. It was a fun little boat ride where they show you alot of the boat that are currently residing in the Harbor. They have a lot of ships that have recently been decommissioned because they dont meet the current safely standard. One of the ships we say was an aircraft carrier that is currently for sell... anyone want a aircraft carrier from the UK???

After that we were kindly informed that there was a chocolate factory store near by and so we went and spent way too much money on wonderful chocolate. We then headed for the bus and a very long trip home.