Brighton

May 6, 2010

What a full day! We woke up earlier this morning in order to get an early start for Brighton. I’ve always wanted to see Brighton, knowing that it’s long been the place that Englanders go to play. Right on the coast, it’s a popular playground for the Brits. Since we are only about an hour and a half away, Michelle and I decided to make a day trip there. We’ve been talking about Brighton all week but waited until the weather forecast looked more in our favor. I’m getting ahead of myself. Janice prepared us a nice breakfast of hard boiled eggs and toast. They were served in little egg holders and eaten by literally chopping the top of the egg right off and then eating it from the inside with a small spoon. It was very different, but still yummy. Hard boiled eggs are not prepared to be entirely hard though. They are left a bit runny so that toast can be dipped into a slightly runny yolk. I’m sure Charlene hates all of this talk of eggs, but it was really yummy. (Charlene is Michelle’s sweet mother who happens to greatly dislike the taste of eggs.) We headed off with great haste to Victoria station where we purchased tickets to take the coach (bus) to Brighton. We were glad to learn from Janice that taking the coach is much cheaper than taking the train which we were originally planning to do. Coach tickets were nearly half the price of train tickets. Thank you Janice!!!! The only downside of the coach was that it took a little longer than the train. I slept the whole way since I was robbed sleep yet again last night in order to make my blog fabulous. Onward. Brighton is fantastic! The coach station is very near the coast. We were so drawn to the sea that we headed straight for it and ended up spending some time on the beach. The beach is quite unique. There is no sand. It is made up entirely of small smooth stones and a few small shells. The sun was out and glorious! We very nearly bought swimming suits so that it could be more fully enjoyed. Such was the pull of the beach, the sun and the water. We ended up saving our pounds but decided that we would likely come back to Brighton some weekend with our friends in the choral program. After soaking in the sun, we walked around Brighton to see the sights. On our walk we came across a hamburger stand that looked decent, so we got hamburgers and ate the in a shopping plaza. After lunch, we wanted to make sure that we visited a few specific sites. Janice lived in Brighton when she was a young girl and she told us not to miss The Lanes or the Pavilion, which is known locally as the onion dome. We didn’t know exactly where either of these things were since we didn’t have a map of the city. Luckily we stumbled on The Lanes right after lunch. The Lanes are shops located along narrow, brick alleyways over the area of a city block, roughly. The shops were much like those of Portabello Road, but the difference here was that the shops in The Lanes were built in the 1600’s. We enjoyed walking through but quickly came to a shop that really caught my attention. It was called The Lanes Armoury. It is another quintessential man-shop. On display were old rifles, pistols, cannons, swords and armour from around the world. Rob, my brother-in-law, would go absolutely berserk in this shop. There were weapons from the Napoleonic wars, from 17^th century conflicts with Spain, the Civil War, and both World Wars. They had weaponry from Japan and China that dated back many hundreds of years. The best part, however, was listening to the two brothers who own and run the shop. They were incredibly knowledgeable in history. We were all ears as they explained the use of an early 18^th century blunderbuss (a large rifle with a belled end) in naval warfare and detailed a story in English history when the Dutch sailed up the Thames river and stole the flagship vessel of the Royal Navy without a fight (a story that is apparently little known because of its embarrassing nature). They would have talked for hours and we would have stayed, listening intently, but we really wanted to see the onion dome. The Pavilion is a Royal Palace constructed by George IV. He began constructing it as the Prince of Wales, expanded and modified it as the Regent King, and later added and modified again as King of England. It was built in the chinoiserie style (which was basically what Europe conceived of as being the Chinese style) which was very popular at the time. Consequently dragons and bamboo with other figures of the orient decorated this exquisite palace. Explanation to the reason the Pavilion is called the onion dome will be limited to the following link http://www.aspects.net/~janus/Royal%20Pavillion.jpg. The tour was really wonderful. After our tour through the palace, we began meandering through the streets of Brighton enjoying the night life of this coastal play place. We enjoyed the parks and the scenery a great deal. During our meanderings, we happened upon two interesting art exhibits, both of which were in churches. The first was a contemporary piece called 77 Million Paintings. The curator and director of the exhibit was Brian Eno, who is a huge music producer and has worked with U2, Dido and several other really big names. The exhibit was a display of several high definitions showing images that changed slowly set to music. It was fairly avant garde, but it was nice to sit in an old church on a couch and relax for a bit. The other church was having a celebration of Federico Lorca, a Spanish poet and dramatist. The celebration consisted of flamenco dancing and traditional music. It was fun to sit in on for a while. Also of mention was a moment Michelle and I spent on a stone pier drinking hot chocolate and watching the sun set. It was really lovely. Unfortunately our day at Brighton had come to a close. We headed back for the coach terminal and rode the two hour journey home.