The Place We're at Now: Portsmouth, United Kingdom

We're living in "the poor man's Brighton Beach," and we wish we could say it's bloody brilliant. But it's not.

This is a regular feature about where we currently are in the world: how we ended up there, what it costs, and exactly what we think.

Brent and I are currently in the United Kingdom, in Portsmouth, tucked away at the bottom of Great Britain.

Portsmouth is a very English-seeming name — one of many British place names with the word “mouth” in them — so it might be hard to know whether you’ve heard of it or not.

Is Portsmouth the place with the beautiful natural harbor that’s also the third deepest in the world? Nope, that’s Falmouth, a little farther west.

Is Portsmouth the gateway to the UK’s famous Jurassic Coast, where so many dinosaur fossils have been discovered? No, that’s Exmouth, also nearby.

Is Portsmouth the place that’s the source of most of England’s dirty words, like “bloody,” “bollocks,” and “bugger?” No, that’s Pottymouth, which I may have just made up.

Anyway, England also has Bournemouth, Teignmouth, and, of course, the granddaddy of the “mouths” — Plymouth.

That’s a lot of mouths to keep straight, so don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Portsmouth.

Portsmouth, marked by the red pin, is southwest of London.

Given its location in southern England, it’s not surprising that Portsmouth has one of the most mild climates in the entire country. Even in winter, the temperature rarely drops below freezing. The last significant snowfall in Portsmouth was way back in 2011.

Like Falmouth, it has an excellent harbor. It’s currently a major naval base and a large portion of the D-Day fleet set sail from there in June 1944.

In fact, this whole area is stupid with D-Day memorials. And King Charles was just in Portsmouth to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the event.

Various D-Day memorials and museums.

Here are a few other fun Portsmouth facts:

• The Romans built a fort near here in the third century AD.

• Danish Vikings pillaged the entire coast during the 8th, 9th, and 10th centuries.

• After the Vikings were finally defeated in 1066 AD, the population rebounded, and in 1194 AD, Portsmouth was officially founded by a royal charter.

• Portsmouth is home to the “Great Stone Dock,” the oldest drydock in the world, which dates to 1698.

• You wouldn’t know it, but Portsmouth is technically on an island, Portsea Island — Britain’s third most populated island. It’s also the most densely populated city in the UK after London.

How did we end up here?

Remember Western Europe’s Schengen Area? American travelers on tourist visas can only stay in the entire 29-nation area for 90 out of every 180 days.

Brent and I would’ve happily stayed longer in Oslo, Norway, our last destination, but we’d run out of Schengen time.

Fortunately, the United Kingdom is not part of the Schengen Area.

Plus, we’ll soon be catching four back-to-back, two-week-long cruises that leave from nearby Southampton, so we decided to give this area a shot.

Where are we staying? What does it cost?

We’re in the Southsea area of Portsmouth, a few blocks from the beach which has a wonderfully British summer holiday vibe — lots of amusement piers and seaside promenades.

We found our current digs — which we aren’t especially digging — on Booking.com.