Brighton Rock

This weekend was really busy, because not only did we have all of our St. Paddy’s Day activities, we also went to Brighton! Brighton’s a lovely little seaside town in the south of England. It was supposed to rain, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it, but the sun decided to shine for us after all, so it was a gorgeous day! We headed out pretty early in the morning and got to Brighton about 10AM. We took a double-decker coach there, which was really cool. SA and I sat on the top part, so we got a really great view of all the sights along the way. The Brighton trip was a mandatory field trip for all the students in the British Youth Culture class, but I decided to tag along and check it out.When we got into Brighton, we had time to take some pictures, like this one of SA and me in front of Brighton Pier. Then we took a tour of the city with our tour guide Doug before our tour of the Brighton Pavilion.On our city tour, Doug showed us all the sights where they filmed the movie Quadrophenia, and also lots of famous pop culture places. It was pretty cool!

Brighton is absolutely beautiful, and it has a little dash of quirkiness that makes it so fun. I took so many great pictures, and it was so nice to have some sunshine and warm weather for a change. One of the coolest things in Brighton is the Brighton Pavilion, which was once a palace for the Prince Regent, George IV. Henry Holland designed it, and SA and I think it looks like the Candyland castle. It has the oniony domes just like the Russian cathedrals, but its very Asian influenced on the inside. It’s really neat. We got to tour through the whole palace, including the state apartments where all the monarchs slept. Victoria’s rooms were pink and green! George IV used it, and so did William IV, but during Queen Victoria’s reign she sold it to the city of Brighton to use. Now it’s a tourist attraction, but it’s really neat. Plus, since I’m obsessed with Victoria, it was awesome to go to a place that she used to go when she was queen. We weren’t allowed to take pictures, but SA and I snapped one outside of the palace.

After the palace, we went to the Chocolate Festival that was going on for Mum’s Day weekend. The British celebrate Mother’s Day earlier than us, and it was yesterday. So there was a lot of activity going on around town. There was chocolate everywhere, and there were a lot of Easter themed chocolates. They were so tempting, but I stuck to the samples. After perusing the chocolate festival, we headed back toward the ocean and had fish and chips overlooking the water. My favorite part of Brighton was the Brighton Pier. It reminds me a lot of Myrtle Beach, just a really elegant and clean version. I took some beautiful pictures from the pier of the Brighton shore. Another really cool part of Brighton was that the white cliffs of England start in Brighton. They’re not as stark as the ones in Dover, but they’re still really cool! You can kind of see them in this picture in the far right shoreline.

The pier is made up of food booths, ice creameries, and a lot of rides. SA and I couldn’t resist riding just one ride, so we did the Crazy Mouse roller coaster together. It was so fun! The roller coaster went to the edge of the pier, so it was like we were going over water. SA took some pictures of Brighton from the ride, but I don’t think any of them turned out since we were moving kind of fast. It was so fun to be like a little kid running around riding rides and eating candy floss (British cotton candy). We spent basically the rest of the afternoon on the pier just enjoying the atmosphere and breathing in the salty air.

Our last major activity before boarding the bus was heading down to the water. SA and I really wanted to feel the water. We were going to stick our feet in, but since we both had boots on we decided against it and just stuck our fingers in. The water wasn’t actually as cold as I was expecting. It was cool to know that I was touching the Atlantic Ocean, and that 4,000 miles away my family was seeing the same ocean. It makes the world seem a little bit smaller. We also took a souvenir from the beach. Normally I take seashells, but the beaches in England are made of pebbles, not sand, so we took a pebble. SA found one that looks a lot like South Carolina, so she took that one. Mine is just cool and I think it’s going to make a great paperweight. After sitting on the beach for a while, it was time to head back to London.

When we got back to London, SA took a nap and I fixed dinner. After dinner I felt really tired all of a sudden and a little sickly, so I decided to head to bed early. Brighton was probably my favorite day trip that I’ve been on so far! It might be rivaled by Oxford, which I’m going to visit next Friday with Katie. I didn’t think I was going to find time to go, but I’m so glad I found a time to go since it’s my favorite place in England. This week is full of paper writing and boring things, so I doubt I’ll do anything too noteworthy during the week. But, I am heading to “the continent” on Friday and will be in France and Belgium this weekend, so look out for a recap of my adventures in Europe!

I have so many pictures that I want to show you from Brighton, so I’ll leave you with one more picture! This is the beautiful and fun Brighton Pier!

Song of the Blog: Brighton Rock by Queen