more brighton

we’ve been hoping for a lazy day for a while now, and today was it. we planned on doing pretty much nothing and it was really nice. after spending a ridiculous amount of time in a net cafe uploading photo, etc, caryn and i went to go have tea at this place called Tallulas. having british afternoon tea was one of the things we definitely wanted to do while we were here, and it ended up being pretty cool. i didnt really know what to expect, and thought it would be just tea w/ a few small cookies or whatnot, but it ended up being a huge amount of food! the place we went to was really small and quaint, and w/ tea we got several sandwhiches, gigantic scones w/ clotted cream, and desserts too. by the time we finished eating, we were sooo full!

after tea, we ended up talking to the owners of the shop and they were both super cool. i guess one of them went to Davis (crazy coincidence, eh?), both of them loved san francisco, and we just kicked it w/ them for quite a while. we talked about everything ranging from hating Bush, to the british govt, to weather. it was really cool to chat w/ the locals. it was funny, halfway through the conversation, one of the owners got a quizzical look on his face and asked us why in the world we decided to come to brighton of all places. i guess brighton doesnt really get too many international toursists. but ya know, despite that, i really liked it here. the town has a relly nice feel to it, and although there never really was all that much to do in terms of sightseeing, i still really enjoyed myself. on a sidenote, i think that i must be very unobservant… i left the place thinking that the two guys were father and son, but i guess they were actually “partners”. woops! good thing i never accidentally said something implying that they were father and son!!

after tea, we went and checked out the main tourist location in brighton, the Royal Pavillion. it’s this large “pleasure palace” built by a prince in the 1800s. the whole thing is really cool and built w/ a huge asian influence and is the only know oriental-gothic structure in the world. the inside of the palace was uberfancy and we learned quite a bit about how decadent of a life the prince had. i guess he didnt even drink water… the mildest drink he ever drank was white wine!! he smoked opium from waterpipes filled w/ port! he washed down the sedatives he took w/ wine, and at his banquets, there would be 100 cooks cooking for a group of just 30 people. i guess sometimes, the meals would have up to 126 dishes per meal!! oh yeah, one other crazy thing we learned… back in those days, sometimes in order to power machinery, they’d get basically a large hamster wheel, put a stray dog in it and drop burning coals inside so that the dog had to be constantly running in the whhel so as not to ge burned!! so messed up!!

after the pavilion, we went to the brighton pier. the weather was pretty shitty unfortunatly, so pretty mcuh all the rides were off. sucks, cause we hella wanted to go on the roller coaters. the weather for the rest of the day was what youo might typically expect from uk weather. grey, windy, misty.

that night we watched a football (soccer) game on tv in our hostel’s pub. people here are so crazy about soccer. we totally wished that we had gone to manchester and gone to the game. hopw cool would that be?? what’s more british than soccer? *sigh*. oh well. watching the game while drinking beer at a pun was pretty nice too. i’ve actually (thanks in part to tom) been drinking quite a bit of beer on this trip. i’m usually much more of a vodka tonic person, but the beer here is pretty damn good, especially this beer called john smith’s and when we can fins it hoegarden. the food on the other hand, is nothing to write home about. it’s not bad per se. it’s pretty decent… but just not very exciting. plus, it seems like pretty much every place has the exact same menu. we’ve had fish and chips soooo many times… although, fish and chips are pretty cool.

oh, one thing i dont think i’ve mentioned is the bathroomat the hostel. we’ve got one bathroom to share between the 10 beds in our room. each moring, the queue to shower is forever. not to mention that the bathroom is quite small. the other annoying thing, is that the bathroom door is pretty mcuh clear. yeah, it distorts stuff inside a *tiny* bit, but you can pretty mcuh see evryhing people do in ther while showering etc. i fogot my shampoo in there yesterday, and today it was 1/3 empty!!! someone toptally went to town on my shampoo!! and i’ve been so craeful to conserve it too. grrrr. also, last night i went to use the bathroom, and to not bother people, i left the light off in there. of course, at one ponit when i grabbed for the wall to steady myself (i was sleepy and out of it), i accidentally grabbed onto the industrial hairdryer in the wall, and it came off in my hand and everything was all loud and crazy, and it was dark so i kept trying to put the hairdryer back in it’s place. heh, people in the room must’ve been wondering what the hell was going on!!

did i mentino that there are starbucks everywhere here?? ugh!!! she’s, it’s bad enough that they took over the sdtates completely, but now they have to swamp the uk too?

so it’s ou last day in the uk today. wow. we’ve been here for 6 days now… and it seems like years!! being back home seems like it was centuries ago!! it’s weird how time stretches weird while traveling!

*v