Day 5: If you bring a rain jacket, it won't rain. If you don't...

Visited Brighton today! Took the train out of London Bridge Station and in an hour I was on the seaside! It was a nice little town, typically English-looking and remarkably similar to Newport, Oregon (but British). The ocean was this interesting pale jade green color, not the dark grey-blue that I'm so used to seeing in the Pacific. The beach was covered in these pretty orange pebbles. It was actually quite nice...except for the weather.

I had checked with the Weather Channel and supposedly it was going to stop raining before I arrived. This did not happen. After a rather wet walk along the beachside looking for a certain street that was supposed to have interesting shops and restaurants, I slipped into a coffee shop and tried to dry out. I couldn't see a window from where I was sitting, so I checked the Weather Channel again to see if it was still raining (incredibly lazy, I know, but I was cold and my spirits were low). They said it had stopped raining. It hadn't. I stopped trusting the Weather Channel for the UK and went out into the drizzle because there was really nothing else to do. My fleece was still damp and in fact still hasn't dried out.

Brighton is actually a pretty little city. There's this one place called the Lanes which is full of cute little shops, most of which sell very expensive jewelry. There's also this Pavilion that was apparently a royal residence in the 1800s but honestly looks a bit ridiculous now, it's got all of these turrets and whatnot that don't fit with any other British architecture I've ever seen.

The Lanes. There were some cool little pubs and shops in these narrow walkways.

The Royal Pavillion

The Pavillion actually had pretty neat grounds; they had been restored to their original condition and are kept in the Regency style (hence the longer grass)

I wandered for a bit more, at this point killing time until I could go back to London and get out of the rain, and got lost trying to find a yarn shop. I ended up sitting in a mall for a bit just to get out of the rain and find some wifi (I'm sorry, it won't happen again), got kicked out of that because they were closing, and had dinner in this awesome little tapas place. I had just about the least Mexican chorizo that it's possible to make, and an absolutely gorgeous mojito. 

My meal was shaped like a smiley face!

Beautiful and tasty mojito

10/10 would go back there if I'm ever in Brighton again.