Located 65 miles southwest of London, Portsmouth manages to feel open and spacious despite being the only English city with a higher population density than London. Perhaps it is that Portsmouth just lacks the brutal barrage of tourist shops that plague every corner of the capital city. Not that Portsmouth doesn’t cater to tourists, it’s just a little less in your face at every turn. With the University of Portsmouth at the heart of the city, there is a palpably large and youthful student presence. I actually attended a day of law school there during my brief visit, though I cannot condemn the boringness of “Equities and Trusts” enough.
Portsmouth is where the British navy has its fleet of battleships parked. It also served as an allied training area leading up to the infamous D-Day invasion of WWII and has plenty of museums to prove it. But the tourist highlight of the city has to be the ultramodern Spinnaker Tower, a 360 foot tall piece of modern art on the edge of the harbor. For just shy of 10 pounds (or 7 if you can weasle your way into a student price like I did), you can take an elevator to the top to enjoy stunning views of the harbor, the entire city, and the Isle of Wight across the English Channel. There is a glass floor on the viewing deck that lets you fully appreciate how high up you are, and it was there that I started my tradition of doing headstands in interesting places. On a windy day, like the one I visited it on, the tower sways in an alarmingly gentle way. My favorite feature of Spinnaker Tower is that there is even a coffee shop at the top that serves you bucket-sized cups of coffee in the clouds!
So after a week of working on a sheep farm in Hooke, I returned to Portsmouth for an auspicious reunion with old friends. When I was studying abroad in Karlsruhe, Germany for a semester, I met my British friends Harry, Alex, Luke, and Aimee. In a glorious series of events, we all came to be in Portsmouth on the same night and we celebrated by drinking for two years’ worth of lost time. Our pub crawl started along Portsmouth’s swanky Gunwharf Quay, a beautiful sea-side pedestrian area, home to hundreds of bars, eateries, and upscale shopping venues. It is also where Spinakker Tower is, which was beautifully lit up that night.
The great thing about good friends is that no matter how long you have been apart you can just pick up the conversation wherever you left it. The four of us, each with our trademark drinks in hand, sat around the table talking about old times and new, roaring with laughter to the dismay of the middleaged party of five sharing the pub. I sipped my gin and tonic with lemon and told everyone about my adventures on the sheep farm, making Harry nostalgic for his old farming gig and thirsty for another few beers. Harry’s lovely girlfriend Alex sipped her glass of wine elegantly as she spouted an impressive string of swears and insults regarding her class of impossibly difficult students. Aimee drank a heady beer, joking and laughing so hard that I was worried her heart condition might flare up; but as she says, why let a little thing like death get in the way of a good time? Luke was taking healthy gulps of cider and reminded us that our reunion was incomplete without Sam, our Arizona friend and fellow German study group veteran. Luke, Harry, and I toasted to Sam, the fourth Amigo from our 2012 Spring Break trip to Mallorca, Spain.
Not wanting to lose momentum, we moved on to the next bar. Still in the swanky part of town, we were all a little startled by the price of our drinks, so after a quick round, we moved on to a more appropriately dingy part of town. It was a cold night, and we were walking along a very windy section of the harbor, so we were very grateful to find a little sea-side pub packed full of senior citizens doing kareoke. Needless to say, we decided to linger. A couple of drinks in, I decided I would put my name on the kareoke list, maybe sing Wagon Wheel, or a cheerful tune by Rage Against the Machine to mix things up a bit. But the DJ said that there were already fifty names on the list ahead of me and that the bar would likely be closed before getting through the next twenty. The funny thing is, most of those names were the same two old ladies who just took turns singing the greatest hits from ABBA–and they were terrible! Sometimes though, when something is so bad, it circles all the way around the spectrum and becomes something incredible! Or maybe we were all a little drunk–who can say for sure? Either way, we joined in singing with the rest of the bar for the third rendition of Dancing Queen. Eventually, once the smell of Bengay became too overpowering, we decided to leave in search of a slightly younger crowd.
It was after midnight, so all of the bars were locking their doors for the night, leaving a club as our only viable option. This presented a problem since clubs in England always ask for ID at the door and our friend Luke had unfortunately forgotten his. I forgot to mention before now that I had been carrying my massive backpack with me the whole evening, as I had gone straight from the train station to the first bar to meet everybody. As inconvenient as this was, I did conveniently have three forms of identification with me, one of which I happily let Luke borrow. After all, it’s not a party without Luke! I hung back from the group as we rounded the corner to a local club called The Library–an ironically popular hangout spot for the local university students. I did not think it would be smart to show the bouncer the same person’s ID twice in quick succession. I certainly did not look like I belonged with my group of English friends anyway, what with the massive backpack and decidedly American accent. Fortunately, the bouncers seemed much too concerned with my pack to inspect my passport very closely. Eventually, I got in with everyone else, and the club even had a cloakroom for my pack! I will never forget that club, if only for the fact that the drinks were so outrageously cheap. I ordered a whiskey sour and was told that they were buy one get one free–they were only 2 pounds to begin with! We danced like no one was watching for the rest of that night.
The next morning started with a surprising lack of a hangover. Aimee had to leave and Alex had to get some work done, so that left Luke, Harry, and I to set off on our own “Lads on tour” adventure that day. We threw around some ideas–Stonehenge, the naval shipyard, the nearest pub–but ultimately decided to take the ferry from Gunwharf Quay to the Isle of Wight. The Isle of Wight can be seen about two miles off the coast of Portsmouth (not that many people ever look for it) and has a surprisingly large population for such a small island of around 140,000. It is famous for its annual jazz festival, the ancient Yarmouth castle, and for inventing the first fully functional hovercraft.
Our ferry ride was slow, but a fun ride since we got seats outside on the sundeck with a few beers. The ferry dropped us at the end of a very long wooden dock; I swear the thing was a mile long if it was a foot! Despite this fact, the three of us marched right by the queue of taxis waiting to ambush the easy prey arriving by boat and walked into the the town of Ryde.
Ryde is the island’s largest city and main shopping area, but it felt very empty and flat during the off season. The white sandy beaches that would otherwise have been nice were marred by cheap little amusement parks and dried up mini golf courses, all eerily empty. We had a terrible lunch with worse service at The Captain’s Chair, a “family friendly” resturaunt that had decided a year-round bouncy house was important enough to fully block the seafront view. It looked promising from the outside, but was a sad little place once you sat down and realized how doomed it was. As we forced down burgers that tasted possibly fatal, we talked about all sorts of high-potential activities to fill our day on the island. There was talk of renting bikes, exploring Yarmouth Castle, going swimming at one of the beaches…. But none of that came to fruition.
Now, there was a sincere effort at one point to rent some bikes. We hiked to the top of the city’s main street to a bike shop, but the guy there refused to budge on the 20 pound full day price despite it already being 2pm. So instead, we spent the entire day (and most of the evening) doing what we lads do best–we drank. At the bike shop, we were at the top of the main drag, looking down a mile long hill that ended at the ferry dock. The entire street was lined with bars and pubs, and we decided then and there that we would have a drink at all of them. Due to an almost complete lack of photographic evidence, everything that follows is a testament to the ability of my brain to retain memories whilst barely being able to walk.
Let me start by saying what a stupid idea it was on my part to wear flip flops that day. While it was an appropriately warm and sunny day, it was because of that dumb decision that I would suffer from shin splints for the next two weeks. At this point in the story, I had already developed a slight limp.
The first bar we went into was weird, to put it nicely. When we went in, there was no one behind the bar, just one man sitting by the window with an empty glass and a massive whiskey-soaked mustache. The mustached man had no reaction when we walked in, and when we inquired about the bartender, he broke character and blinked. There was a TV in the corner playing some obscure 80s soap opera, though the man was not paying it any attention. Suddenly we heard a door slam in the back and a young looking guy came around the bar who, by the smell of him, was fresh off of his smoke break. His English was rough, but he eventually managed to work out our drink orders. As soon as we sat at a table, the bartender made his way back outside, undoubtedly for another fistful of cigarrettes. We felt awkward about making any loud conversation, partly due to our sobriety, but mostly because of the silent mustached man staring emotionlessly out the window, plotting his next murder to the tune of an 80s drama. We drank quickly and got the hell out of there.
The next bar down the hill was similarly empty, but lightyears better in terms of ambience. A woman dressed younger than her age stood behind the bar, bobbing her head thoughtfully to 90s pop music. Both she and the older gentleman sitting at the bar were very friendly and talkitive. When we learned that there was a pool table upstairs, we took our drinks up to the cool vintage loft and shot a few rounds. We had played pool together before in Germany, but even so, I had forgotten what a shark Luke was. He wiped the floor with Harry and I both! British pool is not the same as American pool though. For starters, the table is a bit smaller. The balls are smaller and lighter too, and rather than being numbered stripes and solids, they are all solid red and yellow. Oddly enough, they still use a black eightball. Due to the change in scale, I repeatedly knocked balls clear off the table. I also butted heads with the guys about certain rules, like getting two shots after a scratch and not instantly losing when scratching on the eightball. We drank, we bickered, we laughed; it was a good bar.
The next pub was cozy and surprisingly full of people. By the sound of them, and by that I mean I could barely understand their accents, they were mostly locals. A nice fire was going in the corner and there was traditional irish music fighting to be louder than the horse race on TV. We lingered there for a couple of drinks, enjoying the warmth and sense of community.
The next bar was small and dimly lit, and I do not mean that in a cozy or romantic sort of way. There were a couple of rough looking guys drinking in a corner who looked like they would be more at home in the midst of a grisly biker gang. The three of us each just ordered a whiskey shot, wanting to make our visit short and sweet. There was a sign advertising a beer garden out back, and after our shots we went to investigate if it was any gloomier than the bar. It was. The “beer garden” was actually just a small, and in every sense of the word, shady concrete courtyard surrounded on all sides by ugly gray highrise apartments. It was so dark that we only knew there were two other people out there by the glow of their cigarrettes. We left in a hurry.
The next place down the road was a notoriously cheap franchise bar/resturaunt where I got a pint of Guiness for just 2 pounds. However, the wildly unattractive bartender, from somewhere deep in eastern Europe by the sound of her “Vouble U’s”, would not serve Luke without his ID. This was the first bar any of us had been carded at, and Luke had more facial hair than Harry and I put together. “Hyou löök vay too like leetle boy,” she said through a surprisingly sparse amount of teeth. Harry, with the best of intentions, started to reply “And you look like a fat ugly cu–” I elbowed him in the ribs before he could finish the thought. The she monster then went about telling every other bartender not to serve Luke anything, making quite a show of it too. Harry and I chugged our cheap pints and we all left in a flurry of belches and hand gestures.
We made a quick pitstop in a nice giftshop full of beautifully breakable knick knacks and vintage memorabilia. Harry, feeling suddenly guilty about leaving his girlfriend behind in Portsmouth, wanted to buy Alex a little gift. He apparently has a tradition of buying her strange and interesting owl statues, so we all staggered into the shop to search for one. The woman behind the counter woke up from her nap and watched in terror as the three of us staggered around her little boutique shouting about owls. Harry finally found a chrome owl peeking out from behind a pewter giraffe and nearly knocked over a shelf full of porcelain Betty Boops in his excitment. He paid the woman behind the counter with a couple fistfuls of gold coins, after which she ushered us out of the shop with a broomstick, locking the door behind us.
It was right around then that my right leg suddenly felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. The little twinges of pain that I had been fending off with alcohol all afternoon broke through the barrier of inebriation with a vengeance. I stopped mid-stride with an audible “Ummph” and leaned against a brick wall; my brain struggled to process why motor functions were shutting down so much sooner than expected. The pain shooting through my shin throbbed in such a way that I was scared to roll up my pant leg for fear of seeing 1979’s Alien trying to burst through my tibia. With a series of yoga breaths and a stalwart “Little Engine That Could” mentality, I tested putting weight on my leg. My life flashed before my eyes. Astutely sensing my discomfort, Harry suggested another drink. I needed medical attention, I needed a wheelchair, I needed my mommy–but at that moment, all I wanted was that next drink. With Luke and Harry’s help, I got to my feet and marched on–limped on–whatever.
The three of us collapsed into a nearby wine bar, a much finer establishment than one would expect to find the likes of us in. The walls were lined with shelves displaying wine bottles of various sizes, a few with price tags that could have bought a quite unreasonably priced car. Aside from a young couple inspecting each other’s tonsils in a candlelit corner, we were the only patrons. We saddled up onto three stools at the bar, me with some obvious difficulty, and ordered a round from the cute bartender. She was apparently suffering from severe boredom in the quiet atmosphere of the bar and seemed quite excited to chat with the three of us. We told her all about our self-assigned mission to drink at every bar on the main street of Ryde and she agreed that it was an admirable, if not near suicidal endeavor. It’s not an easy job, but someone’s gotta do it, love. We chatted at length about how the Isle of Wight should consider seceding from the United Kingdom and whether or not hovercrafts could be a viable means of everyday transportation before paying our tab and continuing on our way.
The pain in my leg had not subsided and I had developed a nasty limp that my drinking companions thoughtfully said made me look like something out of the Walking Dead. We stopped in front of a beautiful stone façade with glass doors and purple backlit windows. This is the only bar I can name from that evening because it is, quite frankly, the only bar worth remembering in Ryde. There was no signage outside except for some small ornate script written across the wooden door handle that simply said Bottega. We entered with caution because when we first walked in we were unsure if it was even a bar at all. The whole place was bathed in soft purple light coming from recesses in the floor and the ceiling contained an impossibly detailed celestial sky complete with twinkling stars that shone with diamond-like quality. There were marble statues of Roman gods and goddesses set into the walls with velvet curtains and tapestries in between each, juxtaposing the elctro-jazz fusion music pulsing from hidden sub-woofers and speakers. There was even a spiral staircase leading down to a bathroom with mirrored ceilings! This looked like the kind of place that would sooner sell you a russian escort for the evening than a drink. When we saw the bar, our jaws dropped at the spectacle of glass and neon lights reminiscent of the Tron universe. It sported a king’s arrangement of bottles that spanned the entire alcoholic spectrum twice over.
We sat around a table made of entirely mirrors and ordered three gin and tonics from the curvy blonde bartender. Unlike the other bars we had been to that day, she inquired as to what our preference of gin was, to which Luke, Harry, and I respectively answered cheap, Bombay, and a lot! Our bartender laughed behind her hand in a politely impolite sort of way and said she would give us a lesson in gin drinking. She then proceeded to make three of the most beautiful and fantastic tasting gin and tonics any of us had ever encountered. She measured double shots of Hendrick’s gin and good old Schwepps tonic into three frosted glass tumblers, cutting a long spiral of fresh cucumber into each. I admit, I scoffed at first at the idea of cucumber in a gin and tonic. But after a toast to the beautiful bar and bartender, we each took a sip and were left equally speechless by the utter perfection of the drink. It was strong yet smooth, dry yet refreshing; bitter at first and sweet after. It was the best drink any of us had ever tasted. When we said as much, our bartender smiled knowingly, and went about making our second round before we had finished the first.
As our bartender mixed our second round, she asked us if we wanted to hear a joke. When we said yes, we did not realize what a treat we were in for. All of a sudden she launched into a seductive french accent and told us the story of “Jacque, ze ace Parisian fighter pilot of ze Great War.” The story took the better part of ten minutes to tell, every second of which had our full and undivided attention. Sadly though, I can only remember the last bit of it, which went something like this: “Having brought home ze most gorgeous French mademoiselle, Jacque lit a roaring fire in ze master chambers and uncorked a bottle of ze finest french champagne wiz hiz bayonet. ‘Oh Jacque,’ said le mademoiselle, ‘Kiss me now.’ Jacque said ‘Oui, I shall kiss you,’ and proceeded to spray her face with champagne. ‘Why you do zis, Jaque? Why do you spray me whiz champagne?’ she asked, to which Jacque respondez, ‘Because when I kiss a woman, I want to taste ze finest champagne upon her lips.’ He then kissed. her passionately. ‘Oh Jacque! I want you to make love to me,’ le mademoiselle says, to which Jacque respondez, ‘Oui, I shall make love to you,’ and in one fluid movement tore her dress from her body and laid her upon ze bed. He then proceeded to pour ze most expensive cognac from her navel to her thighs and with the flick of a match, set her perfect body aflame. ‘Oh Jacque!’ she cried, ‘Why you do zis? Why do you set me aflame in your bed?’ To which Jacque respondez, ‘Because ze only way an ace fighter pilot goes down…iz if he goes down in flames!'”
After that punchline, Luke, Harry, and I put our drinks down and stood up to give her a standing ovation. This was it! This was the best bar on the island! And the best part was, she only charged us for one drink instead of two when we left. If you ever find yourself in Ryde, do not miss out on the amazing Bottega bar!
It was hard to leave that place, in fact if I had had it my way, we would have never left. But alas, for the sake of the mission we stumbled onward to the next bar. This ended up being a hotel bar with overpriced drinks and one shifty eyed man with a line of whiskey shots in front of him. Taking inspiration from the shifty eyed gentleman, we each ordered a whiskey shot. Feeling the startling lightness of my wallet, I ordered a neat double of the house well whiskey, Bell’s brand, while Luke and Harry opted to pay a bit more for some quality 12 year aged Jameson’s. The Bell’s tasted so bad compared to the Jameson’s, we took turns taking sips just to laugh at each other’s reactions to it. Once the glasses were empty, we popped over to the next pub for a refreshing pint to cleanse our palates. My limp was even more pronounced at this point of the evening, so much so that I may have looked less ridiculous just hopping around on one foot instead lurching about like a zombie. The pain was now constant and I told the guys that if we stayed out much longer, my leg might give out entirely.
The three of us made our way to the final bar before the ferry dock. It was a warm and cozy atmosphere inside, easily the most lively of all the places we had been that day. It was standing room only in front of the crowded bar, so I tried to lean as casually as possible against it without wincing too much. As I sipped on yet another gin and tonic, I struck up a conversation with a spritely Scottish girl with fiery hair. Since Scotland was on my list of places to see that month, I asked her all about what I should see there. Maybe I was distracted by her radiant red hair, maybe I was just three sheets to the wind, but I cannot recall a single thing she said after “Hello.” I suppose should have taken notes…
There were no more bars left on the street, but Harry insisted on going into a small off license shop nearby to get a bottle of something for the ferry ride back to Portsmouth. “It’s all about keeping the momentum up,” he said. So we bought three bottles of Bishop’s Finger beer and began the mile long walk down the ferry dock. My right leg was all but useless as it dragged behind me with the stubbornness of a leashed dog sniffing a fire hydrant. I lurched my shoulders forward in a Frankenstein’s Monster sort of way and hobbled along as fast as I could. We had ten minutes before the final ferry of the night left us stranded on the island. Luke and Harry eventually leant me each their shoulders for support and dragged me like a wounded soldier the rest of the way to the ferry. We made it with mere seconds to spare, just as the gangway was about to be retracted.
The ferry was mostly empty, and we each collapsed into our own row of vacant seats. Believe it or not, we were not nearly the drunkest people on the boat. An Englishman sitting alone in the back row stood up and made quite a scene at one point during the thirty minute journey, shouting and swinging his arms about in such an alarming way that he was hauled off by the ship’s crew. Two girls sitting on the starboard side were cackling loudly about their escapades on the Isle of Wight that day, and I eavesdropped thoughtfully as I nursed my bottle of Bishop’s Finger.
When we disembarked back at Portsmouth, we flagged down the nearest taxi and got a ride back to Harry’s neighborhood. Harry was again feeling guilty about leaving his girlfriend behind that day, so he paid an unreasonable amount of money for a few pizzas to accompany the owl he intended to give to her as a peace offering. While we waited for the pizzas to be ready, we went across the street to wait at–you guessed it–a bar. I ordered a pint of Guinness and three glasses of the finest water they had on tap and drank it all greedily. When we finally fell into the doorway of Harry and Alex’s flat, dripping sweat, breathing fire, and fully laden with pizzas, the sense of relief and joy that flooded us all was palpable. We had done it! We had made it from Portsmouth to the Isle of Wight and back again in one piece! We were all so proud and jubilant until we sunk our hands into our very empty pockets and realized what the mission had cost us… It is a good thing that such memories are priceless.