Just as it was the day before, our second day in Brighton was ridiculously sunny and warm—no complaints on my behalf! After a slow start in the morning, we headed into the center of town, ditched the car in a parking garage, and started walking—but not before some of Brighton’s most important landmarks were pointed out from the car by our tour guide. The Budgens near the rail station is a focal point for the locals, and the Fitness First next door exclusively serves the ‘fat old women’ of Brighton. The first stop of the day (following that brief interlude) was the Lanes, the oldest part of Brighton which is now a large cluster of small shops and boutiques with narrow lanes connecting them in a near labyrinth pattern. We only entered a few of the shops, partially due to the excessively loud group of school children blazing their way through the tight channels.
One of the shops we entered was a record store, apparently one of Will’s favourite places as a young school boy, but JJ and I were a bit distracted from the music; the local record stores all distribute anti-stress packets and we were fascinated! Inside each paper envelope was a variety of fliers for upcoming artists and soon to come local shows, as well as two full sized, double sided posters for various artists. JJ snagged one (since they are FREE!) and we proceeded to exit before the kids blocked the doorway. Along the way to lunch, we also stopped in an antique military paraphernalia shop and did a bit of ring shopping… but my tastes were too expensive. What a shame… The collectively starving trio munched down on Mexican food at a small café, which surprisingly wasn’t half bad! My nachos were a bit much though and became a sort of communal dish.
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| The Lanes |
The Pavilion was next on the Will Hall-Smith Tour of Brighton, and we passed many other sites of interest in the life of the aforementioned individual along the way. The Pavilion, as the name states, is a large, luxurious estate in the middle of the urban area that used to serve as the ‘party house’ of the royals for a short period. Best described by their own display slogan, ‘dress for excess’, the palace was decadent and did not allow photos to be taken inside…perhaps the first time I’ve ever followed such rules, due to the ridiculous number of staff watching every inch of every room. Our esteemed tour guide gave us a thorough informational tour…via handheld recordings available at the front desk, which we picked up after his failed attempt to disguise JJ and myself as locals to gain a discounted entry fee…Too bad my lack of ID gave us away, I thought for sure my accent was correct (not). The interior decorating was Asian-themed and much of the original décor had been restored after the palace was bought by the Brighton council, who must be footing a massive bill to cover the platinum leaf wall paper in the music room… Apparently the dragon chandelier in the dining hall used to scare away a number of the lady guests of George IV, who had the Pavilion built through sectional remodeling of an old farm house. After we finished our indoor stint, we couldn’t help but visit the garden, where one tourist couple made better poses than any we had seen in previous locations!
Whilst not a fan of the pier, Tour Guide Hall-Smith led the way to the famous Brighton Pier, where we wandered up and down the sides. JJ didn’t buy into the story that the Helter Skelter on the Brighton Pier was the source of inspiration for a Beatles Song, especially after Will and Alistair tried to tell us that Abbey Road in Brighton was the location that inspired that album by the Beatles…even though we both knew beforehand that it wasn’t. Bad luck for JJ, I just Googled it—apparently Will was right…? http://www.examiner.com/rock-music-in-san-francisco/more-than-words-it-s-time-for-helter-skelter.
We grabbed some deck chairs and caught some sunshine, with the sun on the horizon in the same direction as one of Brighton’s older piers that had been burned down, and funny enough it was on fire again. How do you burn a metal frame of a pier??? The fire managed to draw the attention of all the local emergency services, who then blocked off the waterfront and consequently caused miles (literally) of traffic jams that stretched from Brighton to Hove. The drive back to the house was an adventure of mixed side streets to avoid main roads, but nevertheless took longer than expected due to the traffic. After just a short break at the house, we hopped back in the car and drove fearlessly into the traffic jams.
The evening plans included a New Zealand style hamburger joint and the local comedy club, both of which lived up to the hype our tour guide had promulgated throughout the day. The hamburgers, which were larger than both of my fists put together, required a fork and knife to eat—we tried without, and gave up about one third of the way in. No thanks to the traffic, we were running behind and were worried that we wouldn’t get good seats for the show… but have no fear, the comedy club was right next to the restaurant! Our pre-booked tickets got us a fast track in and we grabbed one of the few sets of four seats we could find, which gave us an angled view of the stage. Quoting comedians doesn’t quite have the same effect as a live show, but here is a link to our favourite act of the night: http://www.lorettamaine.com/. We are unsure of her origins due to an ambiguous biography on Wikipedia, but if she isn’t American then she deserves an award for most deceiving fake accent of all time. After the show, we headed to Pav Tav to meet up with some of our tour guide’s acquaintances and headed to another pub for a bit to round out the evening.
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| One of the many poses another tourist made as we walked around the gardens... |
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| Watching the old pier burn... even if we didn't know that's what we were watching |
