- Brighton-
I manage to dig up just 2 whole photos of my own from Brighton. Here is one from the boardwalk.
It's 6:30am, and we are awake and getting ready for our journey to the town of Brighton. You will notice that throughout our trip, we go to bed early, and get up early. It's just our thing. However, it really pisses fellow hostel roomates off that are out partying the night before and come in at 3am and then we wake them up by us getting ready...but then they piss us off when they come in and wake us up. I guess it's a trade off. (My mom hates the word...piss..sorry Mom, it's the best word for it though.)
Around 10am we are heading to a Starbucks (there are about a million in London) before catching our bus. We get really cheap tickets, and are amazed at how thrifty we are able to travel. Patting each other on the back for being so awesome, we get on our bus within an hour, and realize why our mode of transportation is so cheap.
I go to use the bathroom at the back of the bus before it's supposed to take off. Chelsie has to hold the door shut for me because it doesn't stay closed on it's own. Lovely. While I am in there, the bus decides it's a good time to leave, jolting me, and nearly sending me flying out the door of the bathroom that probably hasn't been cleaned in a few bus trips.
The ride was about an hour and a half long in total, and it was THE WORST. I am certain we don't encounter a worse mode of transportation for the rest of the trip, that one won the prize. It was a hot day, and the air conditioning wasn't working, and the driver was insane, he just ripped around the countryside. I don't get carsick easily, but I sure was by the time we arrived. My favourite part? How the hot bus smelled of dirty bathroom the entire ride. Someone pass the smelling salts.
The bus dropped us off at some random bus stop, not a station. We had no clue where we were, or how to find our hostel from there. As Chelsie and I stand there and scratch our heads on what to do next, a random girl asks us if we need help finding something. We tell her the name of the hostel, and she says, "Oh, that is just over here, I will take you to it!" Well, that is really nice of her. After she leaves us at the hostel, we both conclude that we are fairly certain that she is a lesbian. Just one of those things based on her apperance and her mannerism, you know, really judgemental stuff like that. Not like it bothered us, but we noted it. *I was searching on Wikipedia to be able to tell you what ocean Brighton sits next to, when I discovered something interesting about Brighton that I did not know until I wrote this post. Apparently Brighton is known for having a large homosexual community. They also have a nude beach. Not sorry that we didn't find it.*
It's not until we actually see the hostel that we realize that there is a bar on the main floor, and the rooms are on the floors above. Greeeeatt...that's going to be a nice quiet stay.This isn't the ideal situation for us and Chelsie informs me that she has booked a few of these hostels (same company) in a few of our next destinations. Perfect. Oh well, how would she have known?
We ditch our stuff in the room assigned to us, and head out to do what every person should in a new place that you have limited time in...shop!
The shopping in Brighton is amazing. They have these huge clothing stores all lumped together in one area with really cool stuff and very cheap. I want to buy at least 10 dresses, luckily for my bank account, it's hard to find my size. I do buy one very cute grey one in the end. It's a lot hotter here than we expected for May, and though we love to shop, we are finding that a few clothing necessities are needed for this nice weather. Fine by us! We also manage to find a really cool second hand/vintage boutique. I found a bag/purse that I still use to this day when I remember that I still have it. It becomes my constant companion carrying my essentials as we walk around endlessly everywhere we go.
We ar now hungry after much shopping, and want to find some dinner.
Now, Chelsie is a vegetarian, which is fine of course. However, we are in Brighton, a town on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. She doesn't eat fish normally. This place is famous for their fish and chips. You can't come here and not eat it, and she knows it. We go to the pier and pick up some fish and chips for ourselves, and they taste fantastic as expected. It's a beautiful evening, sunny, windy, very windy.
We hang out and walk around there for a while, and decide to call it a night. We go back to our room to rest and just read and relax.
This is when I come to the end of my first roll of film that has my initial pictures of London and our first day in Brighton. I have no idea what I am doing, and I wind the film improperly, pop it out of the back of the Pentax, and realize I did it all wrong. I have ruined my film. *$%@. &%@*. #$&!. Literally, I said that in my head. I remind myself that Chels has a camera too , and I still have my digital camera with me to take more reliable photos. Sigh.
Chelsie was ready for sleep at 7pm. This was a little too early for me, I mean, it wasn't even dark out yet!
Chelsie had borrowed a cell phone from our really kind travel agent for our trip, should we have an emergency or just want to simply call up home for a quick chat. I had been carrying the phone on me this evening just in case maybe Kenton would call. He never did, which was probably a good thing, because I still missed him a ton and would have been sad.
Instead of sitting in the room bored, I took my new bag and went to the beach which was just outside of our hostel's front door. It was a perfect night, and the sun was setting. It was still very windy, which I think it always is there. As nice as it was, it was lonely to be out there by myself, not to mention a little scary. (My parents are reading this and thinking, 'What were you thinking?!?'). I end up going back to the hostel after I walk around a bit, and the sun had set, and head to bed.
Here is a picture from that night.
Here is a picture from that night.
Our hostel is called St. Christopher's Inn, ( I just saw that now in my travel journal), for any of you looking for a fun hostel. No one ended up sharing our room the night before, and it wasn't noisy up there at all. I also have 468 pairs of earplugs for this entire trip, so I don't hear much anyways. We find that the hostel is actually kind of fun, and more "grown up" than Baden Powell House in London, that had nothing to do, except watch tv.
We get up and have breakfast in the bar...no beer for breakfast, just cereal...with milk. And we are very happy that we both finally slept through the night!
We do have some time to kill before we leave, so we find a really pretty park further into the street. It's an uphill walk, and I am dying under the weight of my bag as usual. I am like an old grandma needing to ask for rest breaks every 5 min. I am also wearing my slip on shoes, not my good, supportive, comfortable Nike's. Those will not see the light of day very much during this trip. Like...ew.
We find this super cool cafe called "Taste" and eat lunch there. England seems to be much farther along on the whole "organic" and "local food" kick than Canada, but leaps and bounds. We like it.
I get a call from Kenton and talk to him on the phone for a bit. We hop on a train at the station to head to our next destination, the quaint little town of Bath, England.
I am still in love with what I have seen so far of England and want to shop here always. I am also loving watching the English countryside whip by, and really happy that I am not on the same bus that we took to get to Brighton. Gag.
We get to the main station where we will take a really fast train to Bath. I don't know what it is called. If you know, you should tell me! :)
I am feeling very homesick again after talking to Kenton, and have a few tears at the station. I decide that it's probably better to not talk to him on the phone, and just stick to emails. We tend to check our emails every so often on the internet at the hostels. All this moving around from place to place is also quite jarring, and hard to get used to.
We get on the train, and on this train, you have to sit where your ticket tells you. Our tickets tell us that we are sitting on the seats facing backwards. Oh joy.
It's not long into the ride that we are feeling queasy...it's not a very pleasant ride going backwards on a very, very fast train. Yuck.
We can't wait to arrive in Bath...
-
No comments:
Post a Comment