We left the hotel with some sadness but great excitement, we were keen to see the real English countryside, we dragged our bags across the road to South Kensington Station (lugged them up and down what felt like thousands of stairs (no elevators) and as you were not allowed to leave the bags unattended I had to carry the bags two at a time up all the stairs, breaking the handle on one of the cases in the process and adding to the degree of difficulty. We Hopped off at Victoria station up another thousand stairs before finally hoping on the train to Brighton, we had to sit near the door as that was the only area that had enough space for our bags, unfortunately it meant we were backed onto the toilet, we patted ourselves on the back for getting to the train without getting lost and settled back for the 50 minute trip to Brighton, it was at this point that we heard a horrible screeching noise which turned out to be the toilet door, every time someone went to the toilet the door would let out this horrible screech as it opened and closed the German ladies sitting opposite us were travelling with their small dog and they though it was hilarious, we couldn’t help smiling every time the door opened and closed.
The trip itself was fairly uneventful we only saw a little bit of the country side, though as with most train systems around the world the housing that backed onto the railway line was pretty ugly, littered with rubbish and graffiti and crammed in together.
As we started to come into Brighton we were overcome with a horrible sinking feeling the entrance into the train station is very ugly with rubbish and junk piled everywhere we hoped it wasn’t a sign of what was to come.
We caught a taxi from the front of the station and within 10 minutes we were parked in a dingy rubbish strewn alley, when the driver got out and said here we are, we both looked at each other, unsure whether to laugh or cry, after all we had booked this room for 4 weeks!, we unloaded our bags and phoned the unit owner who sent a friend around to unlock and show us to our unit, which was on the fourth floor up a very narrow stairway, so once again we lugged our bags all the way to the top, the unit itself was very nice and we could see considerable effort had been made (although it did not look anything like the pictures on the net). We had a look around the unit which had a good view of the main street and a gay pub about arms length from the bedroom window, at this point we knew we did not want to stay here for 4 weeks, we met with the unit owner when he finished work and discussed that we wished to shorten our stay to 1 week, we agreed to pay extra to compensate for the inconvenience, after much cajoling he agreed and we breathed a sigh of relief, and gave the unit a good clean (it was tidy but not particularly clean) and un packed our bags we decided to use this week to recuperate, get our washing done and save some money by eating as many meals as possible in the unit, I also wanted to watch the last ashes test.
Our first full day in Brighton was spent trying to decide what we were going to do at the end of the week, we found a very nice hotel close to the tourist bureau and sat ourselves down in the lobby with a pot of tea and a plate of cakes, whilst rifling through the information we had picked up from the tourist bureau, we decided we would hire a car and head off into the country making our way to Dover staying at B&B’s, we made a few phone calls and managed to secure a car at a very reasonable rate for the next 2 weeks. Now we could relax.
We spent the weekend doing not very much, watched the cricket, which was disappointing as Australia lost the Ashes, now we were going to cop it, on Sunday we went for a walk down to the pier to discover thousands and thousands of motor bikes for England’s largest motor bike rally it was quite a sight, we walked back across the pebble beach, which is more like stone beach as the so called pebbles, are quite large, we also had a quick walk down the pier before hopping on the open top bus for a quick tour of the city, we disembarked at the Brighton Marina where there are a number of seconds warehouse style shops and some very nice restaurants, we did a little bit of shopping and rejoined the bus back to the Pier, a very nice day out.
On Tuesday we went down to the Brighton Pier and thought we would do the right thing and have cod and chips, it was terrible, greasy cold and expensive even the bread was normal thin half stale bread with margarine. Well at least we have done it, also walked along the pebble beach and skimmed some stones, sat in an open bar on the beach and had a couple of beers near the carousal, glorious sunny day.
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