Spencer's Semester Abroad: Brighton (April 28th)

April 28th

Today, we had our last day trip as part of our program. We took the train about an hour outside of London to Brighton. Brighton is a beach town on the south tip of the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, the weather forecasts indicated that it was supposed to rain all day, which is the absolute worst weather for this trip. I brought my umbrella, and while it drizzled all day, I never had to use it. Of course, if I didn’t bring the umbrella it would have poured.

When we got to Brighton, we got a tour of the Royal Pavilion, which was King George III’s summer home. It was a smaller, Chinese style palace with all of its decoration resembling what you would find on the orient. To be honest, it looked really out of place, but was still quite charming and really cool to walk through.

From there, we went to a restaurant on the coast to have some fish and chips. I ordered the salmon, which was delicious. One of the girls on my program made the mistake of ordering the sea-bass, unfortunately it did not have a laser-beams attached to its freaking heads (Austin Power’s joke in case you have no idea what I’m talking about). When she got her plate, she was surprised and disgusted to find the entire fish on her plate including the head, tails and scales. No one wanted to look at it or touch it, so I used a knife to dissect it for her and make it look edible. I put the remains on a side plate and asked the waiter to take it away, problem solved. After lunch, we walked down to the pier. We walked around and played a few games in the arcade.

Following the arcade, the group and I strolled through the Lanes, which are the famous alleyways which have a great little shopping district in Brighton. Essentially, these streets were packed, tiny and weaved through the city. It was really cool and different from the other places I’ve been in London. When the weather started to get worse, we stopped in a pub and hung out before leaving back to

London. By the time I got on the train, I was exhausted and slept most of the way back. It was a short, but really fun trip. I would love to go back on a sunny day. At night, we stayed in and Pierce came over to watch the Bulls game and the Heat game. I was thrilled with the Bulls’ performance until about a minute left when Derrick Rose tore his ACL; such a depressing scene.