Day 1 26/7/08 - England

London -> Brighton -> Hove -> Brighton -> London

Highlight

• A very bad start to the holidays with the dismal service from Southern ticket office, where they refused to help us get our tickets after the machine didn’t work. I wrote a complaint about that so will see what they do with it.
• After that debarkle, where we had to run to make our train, the ride went smoothly.
• Not as many people as I imagined, started off by walking to the Visitor Centre, but kept getting sidetracked.
• Stopped off at the many shops, first off, Taylor St Baristas, where they ground the beans in front of you and do coffee art, but that has never guaranteed good coffee before. Luckily, this place actually made the best coffee outside of Monmouth in the UK that I’ve tried, almost worth coming back to Brighton for. They said they have an offshoot in Liverpool St, so I’ll see if that one is any good.
• Next distraction, the various bike and outdoor camping shops, where we managed to get a big bite valve to replace the one we lost for our Camelbak, no such luck with the bite valve cover though.
• Watched Slokky try on all sorts of shoes, but didn’t end up finding one because his feet are deformed.
• And then found a nice Mambo canvas belt and some polo shirts for Slokky…
• By the time we made it to the visitor centre, it was around 10:30 already…
• Never mind, it was such a nice day, around 25 degrees, the sun was shining, it was great to walk around.
• Decided not to pay the £8.50 entrance fee into the Royal Pavilion because the weather was too nice, might come back another day when the weather is crap to do that, and the Art Gallery and Museum too.
• Laid around on the deck chair in the Royal Pavilion Park, before venturing towards food, via The Lanes.
• As can be expected, there was lots to see, with lots of quirky shops and kitchenware and food stores, where we picked up some coffee from Ringtons, so by the time we made it to Bankers for fish and chips, we were quite hungry.
• Got our food down by the sea in Hove to eat. It was quite peaceful, apart from the people screaming from the bungy jumping.
• Back for another walk around Hove, observing the architecture, the yuppy chic people who live there, and the wonderful stores they have.
• Stopped by Audrey’s for award winning chocolate. They were good, but not better than the Belgium variety, but I had to try since Prince Charles had been to the shop.
• Wanted to go into the Real Eating Company for a look and see if I could pick up a cake or something and then tick them off. Well, I couldn’t resist the food that I saw everyone having, so we decided to have a second lunch. The salad had the sweetest crab meat and wonderful nutty dressing and flavoursome tomatoes. The experience was unfortunately let down by too hot and too bitter coffee. Still, you can’t beat sitting on the pavement on a nice sunny day, people watching while you sip your coffee…
• Back to the waterfront, and made our way back to Brighton. As the scenery changed from chic to shabby, the more people appeared on the beach.
• Stopped by The Pumphouse for some delectable ice-cream. As we were really full from our 2 lunches we could only afford one scoop, but it was good!
• Walked by the classic jellied eels store but was too full to fit any more in.
• Paid a visit to the shipping museum, and you can see that a lot of Brighton reflects the heritage of the area.
• Made our way back to the shops, this time to visit the quirky Newtown vibe of the North Lanes. There were people everywhere, hanging out in the myriads of vegetarian cafes and record stores.
• We window shopped our way through the lanes, including an organic shop that reminded me of home, before taking a walk around other quieter areas, like the back of the Pavilions.
• Back to the sea, to the extremely popular Brighton Pier. It seemed everyone was there, hanging out at the fun fair. We watched people screaming on the rides (which were VERY expensive, £4 to go in the ghost house, and that’s the cheaper ones, 5 rides and you can afford to go to Disneyland!)
• Watched all manners and shapes of people sunbath, play the fair games, and eat.
• Decided against going to the Marina as it looked like there was nothing there, so laid on the pebble beach for awhile, before heading to Barry.
• Had a wonderful laid back dinner, read review here before heading home.
• Delayed for 15 minutes coming back because some person vandalised the train so they had to disconnect the last three carriages and also meant everyone had to squish into 6 cars.

Food

• Taylor St Baristas cappuccino (£1.80)
• Bankers haddock & chips (£4.99)
• Audrey’s chocolate Vienna mint
• Audrey’s chocolate hazelnut baton
• The Real Eating Company lunch:
  • Dorset crab salad with tomato (£8)
  • cappuccino (£2.50)
• clotted cream ice cream
taste test Booja Booja ice cream
• dinner at Barry at the Tureen:
  • Mushrooms stuffed with crab and garlic
  • Fresh salmon cakes with a basil mayo
  • Marlin steak sauteed with lime and cream
  • Scotch salmon boned escallope oven-baked with a red pesto, cheese and crumb crust
  • Blackberry liqueur soufflee served frozen
  • Gooseberry fool