Let Me Brighton Your Day

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I went to London this past weekend to visit my friend Jillian (also from Macalester) who is studying at the University of Westminster this semester. We traveled to Brighton, a small city on the sea in southeast England. Our Friday night got off on the wrong foot, but it was, overall, a very enjoyable weekend.

I reached London on Friday afternoon and, after dropping off my things at Jillian's flat, which is located in Highgate and has an amazing view of London, we decided to take the tram to the general area of the National Theatre and walked around for a while. We bought sandwiches and sat on a bench overlooking the River Thames. It was a gorgeous view, we were excited to be together, and we were having such a good time catching up that both of us sort of let our guards down...and Jillian's wallet got stolen out of her purse while we were eating. In hindsight (which is always 20/20, right?), both of us just knew that the lady was sitting way too close to us, but the fact that she was a woman and that she was just eating her sandwich, too - just like us - led us to ignore our instincts. During my IFSA-Butler orientation, we were told over and over...and over and over...how important it is to protect our belongings and to not worry about offending anyone in case we come off as a bit rude when moving our things away from strangers, but I guess it was just really nice to be with someone familiar that both of us felt like we were really safe. When Jillian realized her wallet was gone, which thankfully was right away, it was really scary...but it could have been a lot worse, and in the end everything turned out to be all right. Jillian was able to call home and have her cards canceled before any damage was done to her accounts. However, both of us were hypersensitive the whole weekend about our belongings, and I think this will last the rest of the semester.

Our horrible experience was sort of ameliorated by a marvelous showing of Oedipus at the National Theatre that night. Might I mention that we had front-row center seating? For only 10 GBP each? Yes, 'twas amazing. We were so close that we were mere inches away from having bloody spit spewed on us by Mr. Ralph Fiennes, who proved to be an excellent Oedipus. It was a new version, which I didn't realize until after the show started. The actors wore modern clothing, which was unexpected and puzzling at first, especially because the stage was set to look like a traditional version of the Greek tragedy. But it somehow just...worked. And what was so magnificent about the whole show was that obviously everyone who was there knew the story, but the fact that we were all still on the edges of our seats and gripped with tension came to show how well the play was put together and acted.

After the show, Jillian and I went in search of a police station in order to report her stolen wallet. We never made it to a police station - people are really, really bad at giving directions around here - but we managed to obtain a phone number and get things kind of sorted out. After that, we were both exhausted after a night of fear, anger, disbelief, tension, and awe - it was such an emotional day! - that we called it a night.

We had an early start on Saturday. To obtain tickets at the machines at the train stations, it is necessary to have the credit/debit card with which the ticket was paid in order to verify identity, etc. Since Jillian didn't have her card anymore, we wanted to get there early to explain the situation. Luckily, the man at the station didn't give her a hard time and after only a minute of explaining the situation, Jillian was able to get her tickets fairly easily. So then we were off to Brighton!

It was a short train ride - about an hour - and upon arrival we hit up a nearby coffee shop to relax for a bit and to have a look at touristy maps and figure out how we wanted to spend our day. Brighton is fairly small and very easily navigated. Basically, it's a big hill in which the train station is at the top, and the sea is at the bottom, and everything else is in between. It only takes about 20 minutes to walk from the train station to the sea.

We walked through the blocks in a zig-zag manner from the coffee shop down towards the sea. On our way, we sort of stumbled upon the Royal Pavilion (which is also known as the Royal Palace of King George IV). We walked through the gardens and immediately felt happiness - it was so completely beautiful! The architecture of the palace is so unexpected - its style is made to resemble that of Indian palaces - and is so different from every other English castle I've seen so far, which was fun. Then, we were so anxious to get to the sea that we completely forgot about reading in the travel guide that there was a Jane Austen exhibit inside the pavilion. I'm still kicking myself for having forgotten about that because Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books, and I would have loved to have seen that exhibit.

We spent quite a while at the sea, which was the whole reason we decided to visit Brighton in the first place anyway. It was so fantastic. The weather was gorgeous - sunny with some fluffy clouds. It was a bit windy at times, but it was perfect considering the weather forecast depicted overcast days with high chance of rain. Jillian and I walked along the pebbly beach, collecting lots of rocks and seashells for souvenirs, and watched people para-sailing in the freezing waters. We also frolicked in the foamy waves, which was really fun, and now we can both say we have officially stepped foot in English waters.

Then we walked the pier, which was a long stretch of everything that an amusement park has to offer - game booths, a few rides, fair foods, even a haunted house. We didn't spend very long on the pier, but it was great to look back and see the city from the pier. After that, we did the Brighton equivalent of a boardwalk along the other side of the pier. There were lots of souvenir shops and little fish and chips booths, but we decided to have lunch at a "World Famous" fish and chips restaurant that we had seen on our way to the sea.

After lunch, we visited the Brighton Museum, which is right next to the Royal Pavilion. It was the most random museum I had ever seen. There was no order or sense to where things were placed. Part of the museum was dedicated to an exhibit called "Chinese Whisperings," which required a ticket that neither of us felt like paying for, and the rest of the museum was just a bunch of different things tossed together. The museum shop was also a disappointment, and Jillian found that about half of it consisted of things that can be found in a shop in St. Paul where she works. Also, both of us were by then already tired from spending the morning by the sea and were feeling lethargic after a big meal.

We wandered to Brighton's Theatre Royal and found that Romeo & Juliet was showing, which neither of us really wanted to see since...well, who hasn't seen some version of Romeo & Juliet..? So we stumbled upon another coffee shop and had cute little English cookies along with our coffees. It was a much-needed break. After that we went shopping up and down the streets of Brighton, where we found a lot of vintage clothing that was way too expensive but was fun to see anyway. We then walked to The Lanes, which is where Brighton's modern stores are located.

After a couple of hours of shopping, we went to a nice Italian restaurant for dinner. It was a really great meal, but I've come to realize while being in England that I really miss American service. Granted, people are nicer because they want tips, but it just makes things a lot more pleasant and enjoyable. The service here in England is just not like how I'm used to being treated as a customer in America, so people here come off as kind of rude at times. But Jillian and I still enjoyed each others' company and even stayed for dessert. We had a lot of time to kill before our train back to London since, by dinner, we had seen everything we had wanted to see in Brighton already.

We left the restaurant thinking we would just wander the city again until it was time to leave, but we literally stumbled upon a series of comedic films that were showing throughout Brighton. There was a massive crowd outside of the restaurant, and a man was just explaining the whole concept as we exited the restaurant. The series was called "A Wall is a Screen," and each film was shown on a different wall of a building in Brighton. To get to each film, the crowd followed the leaders of the film organization. Each film was so hilarious; I can't really decide which was my favorite.

The first one was simply words flashing one at a time with voice-overs, and the plot was a man who had cheated on his girlfriend the night before and was facing repercussions the next day through telephone inquisitions from a bunch of people in his life, including his mother, his girlfriend, his best friend who had actually slept with his girlfriend the previous night, and of course the woman with whom he had the brief affair. What made it funny was that the audience would hear what was being said by all of the characters, but the words on the screen didn't necessarily correlate with what was heard but actually revealed what the speaker was thinking. It was fun to have to listen but also be able to read the subliminal messages at the same time in order to get the joke.

The second one that Jillian and I saw used the lyrics of "She Loves You" by the Beatles as the script. It was two old men, one trying to convince the other that his lover really does love him. So, for example, the chorus goes, "She loves you, yeah yeah yeah..." but in the film the friend would exclaim, "She loves you!" and the other man would grunt, "Yeah?" and the friend would assure, "Yeah, yeah!" It was really clever.

The last show we saw was called "Non-Abductees Anonymous," and was set in, go figure, America. It was a spoof on an AA meeting and was about a group of people who were obsessed with wanting to be abducted by aliens but couldn't figure out why they hadn't been abducted yet, despite their unrelenting tries. The show started with a group seated in a circle, and one man introduced himself by saying, "Hi, my name is Dan, and I have never been abducted by aliens," to which the group solemnly responded, "Hi, Dan." It was the most ridiculous thing ever.

There were two other shows, but Jillian and I decided to go back to the sea to see the pier lit up at night before heading back to the train station. I tried taking pictures, but the camera didn't do nearly a sufficient job at capturing how pretty the lighting was. Oh well. While we walked back to the train station, we saw crowds of people walking in the opposite direction in clubbing clothes. Brighton is known for its party scene, but we were so exhausted by the end of the night that dancing was just not an option even if we didn't have a train to catch.

We got back to Jillian's flat safely and basically crashed on Saturday. It was a long day! I got back to UEA early Sunday afternoon and have been missing the seaside ever since. One of my flatmates, Josie, is actually from Brighton, and she was thrilled to hear all about it. It's funny; I was telling Josie about all I had seen, and she said she had never walked through the Royal Pavilion gardens nor been inside the museum, and she has lived there her whole life. It's sort of ironic how people don't really appreciate where they're from and tourists often know more about a city than do its own residents; Josie laughed at me when I gushed about how amazing the Royal Pavilion looks because, to her, it's just another building in her hometown.

So that was my weekend! I'm going back to London this coming weekend for a Halloween celebration. All IFSA-Butler students in Great Britain are invited, which I think should be a really massive party and loads of fun. Until then, I have a lot of work to do for the week, but I will leave you all with my wonderful seaside photos for your viewing pleasures 😊

Until next week! Cheers.

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Comments

[Stephen]

Hmmm OHHH and AWWWW
Well Huong I think we should be abducted by aliens and then make a tv series off of our adventures and become rich. I will have to get on that.