3 posts tagged “brighton”

I'll be in Chile in a week, so I'd better finish this...

It was on our second day in Brighton that we encountered a chav family, what we in America would call trailer trash.  We were outdoors at a pub in the Lanes and I had gone inside to obtain pints and order food.  I came outside to find Husband sharing a table with  several children who had pounced on the empty seat while I was gone.  One of the youths squinted at me and muttered, "You want you chair back, eh?"  He was only 10 or so, but scary enough that I nearly let him keep it.  Soon the kids were joined by their parents, sharing a pint and speaking something very different from the Queen's English.  The mother looked as tired as you would expect from having 4 children before the age of 30 (a guess), but it didn't stop her from wearing short denim shorts, unfortunately for us.  Despite a few open tables outside, the family preferred to sit on the curb, resting their drinks on our table.  The family shared a few packets of crisps and yelled at each other, until they were out of drink and then left unceremoniously, leaving any empties on our table that they had not smashed on the street.  As you can imagine, it was AWESOME.  When I was later back in New York, I read a lot about chav and have thought about applying to do a Fullbright there and study them, but Husband thinks I'll get knived, and he's probably right.

We stayed in Kempton that night and got a bit smashed with a few guys we met in a pub who were visiting from a nearby town for the weekend.  I told them of how I admired their country's crisps, so they bought me a few packets to experiment.  While the exotic flavors of Thai Chile and Lamb and Mint are fun, nothing beats good old Salt & Vinegar.

I'm not sure I've really captured the wonders of Brighton, but it's really a fabulous place and if I ever go to grad school, I will certainly apply at University of East Sussex, home of my idol, John Maynard Smith.

A few hours on a train brought us to sunny Brighton, a fabulous and odd city.  Parts are old like The Lanes, but it's urban and on the beach.  What else could you want?!  We stayed in a nice guesthouse/B&B in Kemptown, the "gay" section of town, which I can't fault in any way, but the owner was a little too involved for our tastes.  We walked from the train station to the beach to find our hotel and the owner was immediately all, "You know service, you are American!" (?!), and showing us how the lights work.  Thanks, we can figure it out.  Headed down to the beach, which is really rocky, I recommend some sort of practical shoes.  Pebble beaches are nice to avoid sand all over, but hurts to walk on (check out my Flickr photos for evidence of this. Forgive my Burberry bikini, it was before I knew about chav. More on that TK.).

The pier is as cheesy and fantastic as you expect:

I played and lost at a lot of casino games.  At this point, Husband joked that it was "impossible to get burned by the English sun" and yet between him (Russian) and me (olive skinned English with a dash of Trinidadian), who do you think got burned?  Yeah, me.  Photographic evidence will later show the pain of this.

Wandered down the beach to the marina that night, and discovered ASDA, literally the Walmart of England.  Marveled at the ingenuity of English booze:

In honor of increased traffic thanks to the magic of MySpace (whassup THMS, AADA, and Hunter peeps) and inspired by my planning of Winter Trip 2006 (Chile!), I thought I'd update.  It's been less than 2 months, right?!

End o' weekend one in London was spent on the South Bank of London.  After much debate, we ended up not seeing the Tower of London (WTF, $30?!), but beautious photos are to be found in the gallery:

We wandered the very touristy but lovely South Bank and ended up having dinner at Pizza Express, in honor of all of my much-beloved chick lit heroines who drink lots of cheap red wine and eat pizza there.  Gotta say, it was pretty excellent.  Yet another thing Brits do better than us: chains.  The chains are more customized to each location, you get the uniform quality of the chain but a little something different of each place.  Also, it was on the river and the view was lovely:
After dinner, we walked across the bridge and had some drinks at another massive pub near our hotel.  I was super psyched to find Lamb's Navy rum, perhaps more evidence of my ancestors (being both Lambs and navy members):
The next morning we checked out of the Renaissance and took the only double decker bus of our journey to the train station.  A little nausiating, but fun, though I am prone to motion sickness. The ticket dude was a bit rude, undermining my decision to buy single tickets to Brighton, and they were more expensive than I expected from copious online research, but thems the breaks.  This was the one and only time Husband was right about Londoners being the Rudest People in the World (other than Parisians, natch), but whatevev.  Journey was made more pleasant by canned Pimms Cups and bacon sandwichs (secret to world peace?).

Brighton TK...