Brighton

Ducked down to Brighton on the weekend. We'd had very mixed reports of it beforehand - varying from 'super-cool' to 'super-tacky'. We got off the train there on Saturday morning and wandered down to the "beach". The "beach" was freezing cold, blusterily wind-swept, and made up of small boulders. There was a crazy old rusted metal ruin just off the beach - very picturesque - and the promenade thingy had a distinctly faded old-school tourist air about it.

But then after lunch when we had a tiny bit of sunshine, we got the hell away from that crap "beach" and went back from the coast a bit into these cool old little windy streets which actually had a bit of atmosphere and were pretty funky. We also checked out the Brighton Pier, which was just a big amusement park thingy that went way out to sea (and had one of the scariest evil take-you-up-into-the-air-and-drop-you-down-and-spin-you-around rides ever - made scarier by the fact that it's effectively out in the ocean...!), so that was kind of cool, but also a huge rip-off with all the total junk that you have to pay lots of money for. We also had a laugh at British surfing, which is apparently done in a 5 metre space between the pier and the jetty - here's a pic.

The we went to check in at the ugliest hotel ever built - a huge concrete block with ugly dribbly stains going down the outside, which also seemed to have the rudest hotel staff ever. We sure know how to pick em! And of course it costs 2.4 times as much for the rude concrete block over here as it does back home...

But after all this doom and gloom, we turned it around. It was a tough morning, so we had a fantastic nap for an hour or so. Yes, we do party hard. And then, we had a brilliant dinner and some drinks at Cafe Rouge (another restaurant chain, but pretty cool - cute little French vibe. The first pic above is from here.), and then we went to see Damien Rice, which was the whole point of coming to Brighton in the first place. And he was brilliant. I didn't take any photos, because (1) photography was banned, (2) stacks of other people were taking photos, despite (1), so I assume I will soon be able to find all their photos on flickr, and lastly (3) it was too good a gig and I couldn't be bothered stuffing around with the camera. Then we had some more drinks on the way home, which was also brilliant, for itself but also because we confirmed that we're addicted to travelling.

Then the next day we slept in (yes, we do party hard), went out for a long cruisy breakfast to read the paper delivered to our room that morning (note, NOT free despite the hefty price tag of the room!), which was pretty decent. Then we wandered around all the funky little shopping streets for a bit, revisited the "beach", which was actually a bit nicer in the sunshine and on a slightly warmer day (pics are from then, not yukky Saturday), and bummed around in a pub for a while. All of which was lovely and left us with much fuzzier feelings towards Brighton than the day before.