19 Jul 06 To the beach!
This time I’ll give in and admit there really is a heatwave happening here! Current temperature is 34 degrees, and schools have even closed early. It’s not a good day to be riding the tube, which fits just fine with my plan to stay inside as much as possible.
Especially since I got a bit scorched down at the beach on Sunday :)
The south-coast beach at Brighton isn’t the closest to London. You can get to the east-coast beaches at Essex in about an hour by train, but we’ve wanted to take a Brighton trip for quite awhile and it’s only an extra 15 minute ride. The train departs from Blackfriars Station which is a few tube stops from home.
We arrived in Brighton around 9:30 and it was already sweaty-hot, even at the shore. Ocean! The water was a gorgeous deep aqua colour… but that’s one long stretch of pebbly beach.
Much of the beach is dotted with canvas lounge chairs you can rent for £1.50, but exploring the promenade and pier was more interesting. Just like any town with a beach, there’s a fair number of chippy’s (essentially a concession with a deep-fryer), pub patios and boat rental outlets lining the promenade.
The pier is where all the fun fair action goes on, it houses a gazebo with carnival games and casino slot machines. I blew about £2 playing a silly coinslot game where you drop your coin onto a huge pile of other coins with the goal of hitting a metal sliding thing that pushes all the coins into an even bigger pile. You cross your fingers and hope the big pile shifts just enough so a bunch of coins (ie. the ‘booty’) will fall out, but odds are rather slim I’d say. You might just win 50p though, never know!
Next destination: Crazy Mouse!
With some (just a little) persistence, Matt convinced me to climb aboard a Crazy Mouse coaster car, a ride which from the ground seemed harmless. We had watched others go round and not heard any shrieking. And it’s not like there’s upside-down loops…
But now we know what the ‘Crazy’ part is: just the feeling you’ll launch off the end of the track and over the edge of the pier, crashing into the water 100 feet below while locked into a coaster car. No biggy :) The cars jerk around so rigidly, too, that you can’t help but imagine that loud snap sound you just heard means you’re strapped into that one car in a million bound to go off the rails. It didn’t.
Later, just beyond the mini-golf course, we caught ‘the world’s oldest operating electric train‘ eastward down the beach toward the sand sculpture festival. Housed under a big tent (so you have to pay to see) are several enormous, impressive sand creations made with a Roman theme. We gasped at the skill, time and patience required to achieve such works of art, then giggled at how erotic - even pornographic - some of the sculptures were! Hey, kids admission is only £4.
Away from the beach we shopped a little in the Lanes, a nest of winding streets with all sorts of shops, and Matt bought me a lovely pink purse :) Had a cursory look at the exterior of the Royal Pavillion and ducked out of the heat into the air-conditioned Brighton Museum & Art Gallery which has free admission but was very entertaining, worth every penny.
We had dinner reservations at Terre a Terre, a vegetarian restaurant recommended as the best in the country. From their website:
Forget everything you have ever read or heard about vegetarian food. Forget everything you have ever eaten at vegetarian restaurants. Dining at Terre à Terre is a culinary experience like no other, with intense flavours, sublime textures and a combination of ingredients that few have the imagination or daring to put together.
The food was great, all components works of art, and definitely the best vegetarian we’ve eaten. My dish was Hot Parmesan Dumpling, with Beetroot Chevre Battenberg served with green olive and fresh leaf smash, brunoise of pumpkin and cumin crecy, lentilles de lait, merlot soft sticky onions and rosemary rub. Sounds pretty good right? Lots of supremely rich flavours, the kind I could treat myself to once a year.
Matt had Terre à Tapas a selection of lovelies, hot & cold, served with garlic & herb focaccia (large enough for one hungry person or two to share). The Tapas samplers were beautiful, but not large enough to keep him from ordering dessert.
All that and we were home around 8:30pm, exhausted and crispy.
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GET FED:
hey wow. I am going to be in brington with my kids durring the first week of august. What is this crazy mouse roller coaster and mini golf . .I wanna go with my kids. They are five and seven should not be a problem? I am thinking of taking the bus down to brighton from london is it cheaper, than the train? Thanks for your posts. As I am trying to plan this trip from berlin and it stressing me out. .
Comment by jeremiah — July 20, 2010 #