A Day Trip to Brighton

The seashore at Brighton - like something out of Austen!

Abigail, Marissa, McKenzie, and I left the flat at 6:30, believing that the trams did not start running until 7:30 and we would need to walk all the way to the station to catch our train.  Imagine our simultaneous joy and anger, then, when a tram zipped past in the distance.  We rode to the station in plenty of time for our train but lamented the extra 15 minutes we could have slept in.

Our plans to sleep on the train were somewhat hindered by the arrival of a rather vocal family who settled just behind us and proceeded to have loud, energetic conversations which often led to raucous laughter.  The mother, to her credit, made occasional attempts to shush her daughters, but they ignored her until she joined in the chatter.  At long last, the train pulled into St. Pancras in London, and we parted ways from this noisy group.  We caught the connecting train to Brighton, dozed a bit on the way, and finally alighted in one of the UK's favorite seaside towns.

Within 20 minutes of getting there, we all noticed a marked difference in the atmosphere of the town as opposed to Nottingham.  It felt more relaxed, less hurried, more open - at least to me.  That's been something I've noticed as we visit various unfamiliar cities around the UK on this trip: each place has its own feel, sometimes for obvious reasons, sometimes just because.  We stopped at the "street diner" where several vendors had set up stalls with foods ranging from burgers to organic frozen yogurt to falafel.  I got chicken paella, which was absolutely delicious.  Then, since the sun had come out, we headed toward the beach.

My Pullman friends have heard me say this often during the school year, but there's something weird for me about being landlocked.  I grew up no more than twenty minutes from saltwater (such is the beauty of the Pacific Northwest), so it's something I unconsciously miss while I'm further inland.  I've been having similar feelings in Nottingham, so it was nice to see water again!

The pebbly beach, though not as sandy as some of our group are used to, was beautiful.  The pier stretched out to our right, the water lay before us, and the sun had come out despite a forecast of thunderstorms that afternoon.  We lay on the beach for awhile before McKenzie and Abigail went to try out the rides on the end of the pier.  Marissa and I stayed behind, sunbathing and reading.  Magically, the loudspeakers on the pier began blasting Disney music!  They started, appropriately, with "Under the Sea," then played "Friend Like Me," "Breaking Free" (High School Musical), "You'll Be In My Heart," "Circle of Life," "Be Our Guest," "A Whole New World," and "Part of Your World."  We sang along, of course.

After a while, raindrops started coming down in earnest, so Marissa and I gathered all of our stuff and realized it would have been wise to have a meeting place in case of rain.  Luckily we managed to find McKenzie and Abigail before McKenzie had to leave for a wine tour she had signed up for, and we didn't get too wet in the process.  Having established a meeting place and time for that evening, the three of us decided to ride the Brighton Wheel, a Ferris wheel with enclosed pods that give you panoramic views of the coastline and city.  A really weird thing happened while we were standing in line: one of the guys behind us asked if he could have a drink from my coffee.  When I responded, "Um, no," he looked remarkably despondent for someone who had literally just asked a complete stranger if he could have some of her beverage.

Our Ferris wheel ride was narrated by a recording of a sassy British man who made references to certain, ahem, activities favored by famous but wanton guests in Brighton's history, such as Oscar Wilde's many stays in a certain hotel.  We didn't really want to look around for the landmarks the recording was talking about, but the jokes about "dirty weekends" were funny.  The views were spectacular and left us twisting in our seats, trying to see out of every window at once.

After the wheel, the sun had returned, so we chose to take advantage of it and lounge on the beach a bit longer.  We sunbathed, I read my book, and Marissa and I even waded into the water up to our waists.  A little girl was blowing bubbles that the breeze caught and carried across the beach.  After three weeks of running around cities and near constant travel and thinking critically, it was so relaxing to simply do nothing and have nowhere to be.

Hanging out on the beach

Abigail convinced me to go shopping with her, so we left Marissa, who could not be budged from the beach, and went to explore the Lanes, a twisty maze of boutiques and shops in the center of Brighton.  The shops turned out to mostly be jewelry and ridiculously expensive clothing.  But I did buy a sarong to wear as a skirt when I discovered the discomfort that accompanies putting on one's jeans too soon over one's damp bathing suit.

McKenzie's tour had gone longer than anticipated, so the remaining three of us found a restaurant for dinner where she eventually found us and we discussed our enjoyment of the day and our various adventures.  We found our way back to the station, caught the train back to London (after some confusion as to which train was actually going to St. Pancras), and got onto our connecting train back to Nottingham.

However, our train was delayed because the driver had not yet arrived at St. Pancras due to signal problems following a lightning strike in Derbyshire.  Yes, a lightning strike delayed our train.  The ride only got stranger from there.  At one point, a drunk group stood at one end of our coach, jeering at the attendant who asked one of them to put a shirt on.  (The attendant then called them children under his breath as he passed us, which amused me greatly.)  They eventually got off, and most of the people in our coach fell asleep as it was now past 11 p.m.  This peace and quiet ended, however, when a group of people about our age got on the train and one of them struck up a conversation with another passenger.  This would normally be fine, except that this young man seemed not to understand how to keep his voice below a shout.  His volume alone annoyed us, but he proceeded to go on a (still loud) political and religious diatribe.  Again, everyone is entitled to his or her opinion - but really?  Shouting not-particularly-well-informed platitudes about the Middle East while people are trying to sleep?  Grr.  And finally, at the stop where Mr. Loud Opinions departed, a hen party (bachelorette party) rather drunkenly boarded.  We gave up on sleeping through their cackling and shrieking, but agreed that at least they sort of had an excuse for being loud.

When the hens left the train, another attendant came through the coach, in which we were pretty much the only ones left, and said, "Thank God that's over then.  I was going out of my head with that noise!"

"Does this happen often?" McKenzie jokingly asked.

"Never.  This was just weird."

We arrived in Nottingham just past midnight, waited for what seemed like forever for a cab in the normally crowded taxi area, and collapsed back at our flat.