On Saturday morning, Mark and I went to the Isle of Wight with Anderson Tours. The Isle of Wight is a small island below England and a part of England. In order to get there we had to take a ferry which was fun. We left from South Hampton, where the Titanic set sail for New York. The ride there was so windy I thought I was going to blow off the ferry. We saw a pirate ship (or think it was one) on the way to the Isle of Wight. The island is very very cute! There are tons of cottages and typical english houses with thatch roofs. Our first stop was the Osboune House where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert went for vacationing out of London. It was HUGE. I don't get why King's and Queen's needed such big houses. I want a shack so its easy to maintain, but hey everyone is different. We took a carriage ride to the house because it was a bit of a walk. Everyrooom had a statue of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria or a painting, or something with them on it. It was crazy, I swear there were millions. The rooms were quaint and cute and there was one room where everything was made out of deer antlers! Pictures weren't allowed, but I sneeked a picture of the antler room. A lift was put in when Queen Victoria got older and it was manually operated. The gardens took up a lot of land and were georgeous as always. The whole island was green, green and green! In the back of the land, a walled garden was there but plants were still being planted and growing.
This trip was great because we did stops all the time and we not on the bus a lot. The next stop was a church that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert built in the mid 1800's. It was a unique design and very small and cute. If you notice on different pictures, there is a V and A put together to make their "symbol".
Our next stop was Godshill - Gods Hill not God shill haha and it was amazing. This town had a model village where it is 100th of the size of the real village and we got to walk around it and pretend to be godzilla or king king. Inisde the model village is a model of the model village, and inside that is another one! one up to 1000th of the size! Different houses, shops and hotels were modeled and filled with people figures. There was waldo and a flasher! For the churches, music was playing inside the church and the band one had actual music playing. A rail road ran though part of the town and had animals on it. Many of the houses had real mini thatched roofs. We walked to the top of the hill where there was a church and looked over the town. I grabbed lunch and then it was off to our next stop.
Sandown is the town that our hotel was in. The hotel was one block from the beach and near High St. where like in Hampton is the road with all the shops and restaurants. Sandown reminded me of Hampton a lot because of the way it was set up. Sandown had a peir though. We went to the beach and I wore flippy floppies and capris to go in to my knees but I ended up getting most of my capris wet. Mark got his jeans wet but its all good cause it is the beach!! I love the beach and can't wait to go when I get home. The peir was awesome, it had an arcarde and we spent about an hour there haha. When I was a kid, I used to play this egg game at one of the camp grounds we went to and Sandown had it! I played a butt load of games on it and Mark did star wars. I did a Harley Davidson motorcycle game and it was hard haha. We did a few other games and then did mini golf. Mark was a doll and picked up my ball each time because bending is a bitch for me 
On Sunday we went to a bunch of towns around the island and we pretty much did a full circle around the island. The first stop was Shanklin. This town was right on the water and had great views! We walked around the town, did some shopping and then made way to our next stop. Ventor was a cute town and I relaxed in frount of the water and then walked around the town for a bit. There were two little kids pushing a small stroller down the hill and they stoped me to show me and talk to me for a bit, so cute. Brighstone was the third stop and there is a pearl store there. It had a few dressed on display and pictures of famous people who were pearls. On display was a remake of one of the largest pearls in the world that was sold for $200,000 USD in 1980 and now is valued at $40 MIL USD. Damn. I found a ring that I really liked and bought it because it was very inexpensive. We then adventured to the Needles which are rocks that come out of the water and supposdely look like needles. I thought it was hyped up about and wasn't that exciting. It sounded like there would be tons of them in the water but only four or so. The needles were still neat. It was sooo windy tooo. The walk the Wight was going on where a bunch of people walk around the island and the finish line is the area where the needles are. Lots of people looked exhausted and tired from it. The weather was crazy, rain in the AM, sun till 2, then a down pour, and then sun again haha. Our final stop was Yarmouth and it's a port and we only had 20 minutes there so it was a relaxing time.
I really liked this trip because there were always places to go, not a lot of driving, and the weather was nice to our tour group.
