Yes, the New Forest is only a few minutes away if you are driving. It's slightly more difficult to access on public transport. You can get the train from Southampton to Brockenhurst (in the middle of the forest), Ashurst or Lymington (seaside sailing town on the edge of the forest. Very popular). If you have a car I would recommend Beaulieu. This is a lovely village where you will see the ponies wandering free (drive carefully! Ponies have no road sense). It's hard to get to on public transport though.

Recently I went on the New Forest tour bus, which does a circular route through Brockenhurst, Lymington, Beaulieu, Exbury gardens and Lyndhurst. You can get off at any of these places. The full tour takes 2 hours if you don't get off anywhere.

I live in Southampton and have no idea where this Maritime museum is! But I am not that interested in this kind of stuff. There is a tiny museum with Titanic stuff in. Perhaps this is the one? There is also a museum about Spitfire planes which I have never been in. I am not much use here, sorry!

Southampton town centre is very much average town UK. All the usual shops (in a massive shopping mall called West Quay). It also has some walls a bit like York, but they are not complete.

Akkarin, the museum with the Titanic model is the Maritime Museum.

Dakmermaid, the museum isn't very big so you could easily do it in an hour, probably even less.

The New Forest is a wonderful place to visit. As Akkarin mentioned, Beaulieu is beautiful and they also have the Beaulieu Motor Museum which is worth a visit alone whether you're interested in motor vehicles or not. It's a great day out.

Other things you could do in Southampton could be a bit of shopping in West Quay (the big shopping mall in the city), walk the old walls of Southampton and visit the many museums along the way. Southampton also has an art gallery which is pretty cool for a few hours to chill.

Hope you have a great time. Come back and let us know how your trip went.

Thank you both for your replies and great information. We're not going to be there until next May, but I'll defintitely try to remember to come back on and post all about it. Southampton is our first afternoon (of a 3 week European vacation) after flying over from the US so i'm sure by that afternoon we'll be exhasuted and I was probabaly a bit overzealous thinking we could go to the New Forest, as awesome as it sounds. we'll probably have to save that for another trip... I think walking the old walls and taking in the museums along the way is a more low key and relaxing way to spend our first day. Thanks again!!