taking a weekend trip to brighton, of course!
early friday morning, my friends emma, karen, mary, and i headed to the oxford bus station to begin our 4 hour journey to brighton, a seaside town on the southern coast of england. one and a half hours from oxford to london, two and a half hours from london to brighton. we did a lot of sitting on buses that morning.
when we got to london, we had about an hour before the next bus to brighton departed, so we decided to see how much of the city we could explore in that time. buckingham palace was about a ten minute walk from the bus station, so we headed that direction. good call.
we got to the palace just in time for the changing of the guard! it was really cool.
i appreciated it much more this time than the last time i saw the changing of the guard, when i was 14 and thought i was too cool to care about it, and hadn't slept in approximately 24 hours. but this time, i was almost giddy with excitement, probably mostly due to the fact that we had no idea it was going to happen when we decided to check out the palace. it was just perfect timing. thanks God. unfortunately, we didn't get to stay for the whole ceremony because we had to catch our bus. so we went back to the station and two and a half hours later, we were in brighton!
the first thing we wanted to do was see the royal pavilion, so we walked straight there. the pavilion is the palace that king george IV built as his seaside getaway when he was regent, acting as king for his ailing father. and i have to say, it is absolutely nothing like what i expected. it was so, so much better.
a little taj mahal-esque, right? as beautiful as it is on the outside, it is ten million times better on the inside. it was the most extravagant and immaculate place i've ever seen. i was absolutely in awe walking through it. the entire house is decorated in the chinese style. the chandelier in the dining hall is held up by a dragon on the ceiling. a dragon. insanely cool. unfortunately they don't allow any photography inside, so you're either going to have to just imagine it or go visit for yourself. i highly recommend the latter. it is more than worth the trip.
after leaving the pavilion, we made the two mile trek to our hostel to check in and shed our backpacks for the rest of the day. we walked along the beach the whole way and it was beautiful. people were relaxing on blankets and in chairs all along the pebble beaches, and the ocean sparkled in the sunlight. it was such a gorgeous day.
you know how i do dumb things sometimes? well, this weekend was no exception to that. i decided, since we were only bringing backpacks as luggage on our trip, i would only bring one pair of shoes with me, in order to save space. mistake. of course the shoes i brought were flat sandals. of course. why would i bring shoes with any arch support on a trip where we were planning to walk everywhere? my feet really hate me right now.
anyway, we made it to our hostel and checked in. i had pretty low expectations, having never stayed in a hostel before and only hearing very uncomplimentary things about them in the past, but it wasn't too bad. it smelled vaguely of play-doh, which i didn't really understand, but that was probably the worst thing about it. after checking in, we took a bus back to the city centre to find somewhere to eat. we figured since brighton is right on the water, they probably have some pretty great fish and chips. so we chose a restaurant overlooking the ocean that claimed to have "world famous fish and chips" and grubbed down. it was delish. of course, i don't like chips, but the fish was great. after dinner we walked down the pier to see what it was all about.
by some miracle, we managed to be in england for a whole week without it raining on us. but saturday broke our lucky dry streak; it rained all day. the rain itself wasn't too bad, but the wind was killer, so we tried to spend as much time as possible inside. after taking advantage of the hostel's free breakfast - white bread for toasting and corn flakes - we checked out and went back to the city centre, where we decided to look around the art and history museum. it was really, really cool. it had so many different kinds of exhibits; every room was something new and interesting. furniture, egyptian artifacts, burmese and aftrican art and clothing, the history of brighton, british pottery, fashion through history, 18th century political cartoons - the museum had a little of everything. after exploring that, we worked our way through town to a store called "vegetarian shoes." karen is vegan and had been wanting some of their vegan doc marten-like shoes for a long time, so we made sure her wish could come true while we were there. then, after wandering around in the wind and rain for far too long, we found a place to eat lunch, and then went to check out the brighton aquarium - which we promptly left after finding out the admission fee was 16 pounds. no thank you, i can spend $35 to see an aquarium in dallas. at that point we had two hours til we had to catch our bus back to london, so we decided to go back to the royal pavilion for tea and scones in the tearoom. great decision. i really think i need more scones in my life. we hung out and read there until it was time to go, and then began the 4 hour trip back home. cheerio, brighton!
it was a fun trip, but i have to be perfectly honest: i didn't love brighton. the beach was beautiful and the royal pavilion was way cool, but the actual city just seemed kind of dingy to me. but i went in with really high expectations, thinking we'd find an adorable, quaint seaside town right out of the 1950s, which of course destined me for a let down. i think the reason i was disappointed was that everywhere else i've gone since getting to england has just blown me away, because they've all been big tourist attractions, so there's a ton of work put into making the towns look spectacular all the time. brighton is just a town. just a normal, residential town on the coast. it's not putting on a show for it's thousands of expectant visitors or trying to impress anyone. so in comparison to bath and stratford, which thrive on tourism, it falls short of the mark. but that's just my opinion.
overall, it was a really fun weekend, and even though i didn't fall in love with brighton, it was definitely a worthwhile trip.
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