7 September - Day 2

A much needed night of sleep behind us, Bruce made coffee. Our hostess had left milk for us in the fridge, but the fridge had been turned off at the switch, so it was sour. Black coffee and croissants from Co-Op was breakfast. We decided to head to Osborne House, the former residence of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It's a lovely place. It's managed by English Heritage. We're members of the Royal Oak Foundation, the American arm of the National Trust. What we love about the properties managed by The National Trust is that each property has wonderful docents with seemingly endless knowledge of their properties. Not so English Heritage. Osborne House is glorious. Chock filled with beautiful paintings, sculpture, porcelains, etc. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was signage letting us know the provenance of these objects? There was one hall in which Indian painting were located where a docent treated us to the background of the paintings and the era in which they were acquired. In another room, a docent pointed out two paintings that were done by Queen Victoria. What about the rest of the property? Quite frankly, I felt cheated.

At any rate, we toured the house and the back garden. Upon our entrance to the property, a docent advised us to see the house and back gardens then head down to the shore and them to the Swiss house with its wonderful cafe. So, down we headed to the sea, where we got to see Queen Victoria's "bathing machine." Sadly, the door was shut, so we couldn't see the interior. An almost interminable uphill walk led us to the Swiss House. At this point, in the 85 degree+ temperatures, all I wanted was something to drink. Oh, the cafe is closed. Nowhere to access water. Uh huh. Screw the Swiss house, I want out. We walked back to the main house and found their Terrace Restaurant. Yay! Most of the tourists found the restaurant too expensive so headed for the cafe. I ordered a lovely beet salad and the most delicious ginger beer I had ever tasted. (Perhaps that reflected how thirsty I was.) Bruce had Bruce ordered "Prince Albert's pulled pork sandwich. Okay, just a guess, but I doubt very much that Prince Albert ever tasted pulled pork. Feeling human again, we made our way back to the #5 bus to Newport, transferred to the #3 and returned to Ventnor. After a bit of time relaxing at the flat, we made our way down to the Seaside. Feeling a bit peckish, we landed at The Met, a typical seaside spot with very basic "tapas". We had the taramasalata (not nearly as good as that which I used to get in Astoria, Queens), barbecued pork belly (which I think was pork bits; not nearly tender enough to be pork belly) and a crab and shrimp ramekin. That was actually really tasty and served with toasted bread. Drinks took a bit of time to arrive, but it's an inexpensive seaside spot, so we didn't really mind.

Back home, we enjoyed Gingey's affections and a G&T, but decided that the current digs were not acceptable so I found a new place to stay and got our hostess to accept the change in our end date. Off to bed.