Day Trip to Brighton

We had both heard a lot about this seaside town, and both of us had been missing the ocean so last Sunday we got up early and hopped on the train to Brighton.

Brighton is on the south coast of England, and the ocean is part of the English Channel, it is approx 90kms south east of London. It was supposed to have been a ‘resort’ style town where the rich people came to get some sunshine and enjoy the ‘therapeutic’ qualities of the seawater. We think maybe as these rich people had been living in London with the filthy Thames; any seawater would have been therapeutic.

So we got to the station and found our way to the seaside. Despite being dressed for the beach, Louise had to put on her thermal and scarf until the sun came out a few hours later.

We wandered up to the West pier, which as you can see by the photos was burnt down in 2003. It was built in 1866 and is awaiting restoration. Here we found an English version of the bungy, basically it’s a large crane 51m up and the free fall is about 1 second. Very tame (aka lame) and people were queuing up to pay £50.

The beach itself is just large pebbles with hundreds of deck chairs set out (which you have to pay for of course). The sign that greeted us at the beach was ‘Award Wining Beach’, (we would like to know what award the beach has won), and then the second sight that greeted us was a man relieving himself right out in the open on the beach. The water was also freezing, although we did see some brave souls swimming later on in the day.

We then headed to the main part of Brighton, the Brighton Pier. This is basically a massive pier that has a carnival at the end. It was all a bit over the top, there was a room with lots of kids video games and then all of a sudden it turned into a place with weirdos playing the slots - Louise lost her £2 in about 14 seconds.

Again, the rides at the carnival were ridiculously expensive, for example 4 pounds for 5 mins on a trampoline. It was basically the British carnies with rickety old rides similar to the AMP shows from back home. Louise did manage to persuade Hamish to ride the bucking bull in order to win her a prize. All he had to do was to stay on for 30 seconds, but alas after 3 attempts he was still being thrown off (due to mitigating circumstances).
 

So Louise had to take matters into her own hands and have a go at another Carnival game, and of course she won herself a prize.

Nice teeth...

At the promise of ‘the best fish and chips on the south coast’, we thought we better to give them a go. In short they were rubbish!

 



 We then navigated our way through the hens parties, and sunburnt, drunk English people to the Royal Pavilion. The Royal Pavilion was built for George the 4th in the early 1800s, and is quite amazing as it was built in an Indian - Oriental style.





We did a tour of the palace where George stayed for a long period of his life - it is fair to say that the design bordered on kitsch and tacky. For example, the chandelier in the dining room, which contained 6 copper dragons, weighed in at one tonne, and one banquet had 187 different dishes.

After the Royal Pavilion, we wandered around Brighton’s Lanes which are a collection of nice boutiquey shops and pubs.

Then we headed back to the West Pier to sample some of the wares from the French market for our second lunch. Basically this was a disaster, we got ripped off and the food was awful, not to mention the ‘Battle’ cider that was a true battle to drink.

We chilled out in the sun reminiscing about beautiful beaches, nice beer and yummy food back home.

Highlight: Lou wining her prize from the mischievous carnies and boutique arty shops on boardwalk.
Lowlight1: BATTLE CIDER! 
Lowlight 2: English beaches and not being able to get on the earlier train home.
Interesting fact: John Nash (the architect behind the Royal Pavilion) was also the architect who also transformed Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace.