I suggest telnet: telnet www.nowhere123.com 80 and you are talking raw to the server.
Example:
telnet 127.0.0.1 80
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /index.htm
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//IETF//DTD HTML 2.0//EN">
<html><head>
<title>301 Moved Permanently</title>
</head><body>
<h1>Moved Permanently</h1>
<p>The document has moved <a href="https:///index.htm">here</a>.</p>
</body></html>
Connection closed by foreign host.