Bliss to Blisters in Brighton

Brighton - the place to get husbands! (See picture above) Kidding! Although, poor Garrett had to endure a day with five girls dragging him everywhere. (Including shopping)

My day began at 4:45 am. That's right, 4:45 in the MORNING. That is when my alarm went off so I would be ready in time to make our 6:21 train. So if this blog post doesn't make sense and has an unusual amount of spelling errors, I blame it on my severe lack of sleep.


First of all, Brighton is BEAUTIFUL. We (Rebecca, Tricia, Garrett, Melissa, Sarah, and I) got there just as shops were starting to open and no one was on the beach. We took advantage of this and took tons of pictures on the beach. The water wasn't too cold, but the pebbles on the beach weren't the most comfortable things to walk on without shoes. Oh well. We also spent about twenty minutes attempting to take a jumping picture without much success. Melissa has all of those on her camera. It'll be fun to see the results.

We spent about an hour and a half walking up and down the boardwalk and beach. Then we walked over to the aquarium to meet up with some other people from the group. Rubie, Anna, and Addison met up with us at the aquarium. This aquarium is the oldest working aquarium in the world! If I remember correctly, it opened in 1872. It's pretty dang old! They had some really cool exhibits. My favorite was the African mud turtles. They look like they're smiling at you! They were adorable. My second favorite was the tunnel that went under the shark and turtle tank. Walking through that was really fun. They had both a green turtle and a loggerhead turtle. It was Rebecca's first time at an aquarium - she had a blast.

Oh, I took the above picture just for mom. The aquarium is very old and apparently haunted! Sadly, I didn't experience and "ghostly occurrences".

Once we were done at the aquarium we walked back down the boardwalk to get something to eat. At the last minute I chickened out and opted to get chicken nuggets and chips instead of fish and chips... one of these days I'll feel adventurous enough to order fish & chips. After lunch we walked around the booths around the boardwalk. I bought a really really cute purse that I LOVE! Garrett's crazy pants, however, were the coolest purchase of the day.

The Brighton Pier looks like something straight out of a movie set in victorian times. At least, that's what it looks like from far away. We walked over to the pier and Melissa and Tricia rode this insane, upside-down, spinning ride that took them really really high above the water! It was pretty crazy! Rebecca and I went into the arcade and played a little DDR. She had been seriously holding out on me! Apparently DDR is a slight obsession of Rebecca's, and she plays it often. She was pretty much a pro.


Did I mention that I saw a mermaid while on the pier!? We had a lot of fun taking pictures on the pier. Yes, that's Garrett the mermaid. Again, poor Garrett.

We did even more shopping after the pier! We went to the North Laines - a street I had looked up online while planning the trip. After a little bit of shopping Garrett, Melissa, and Sarah decided they were done shopping and just wanted to sit down for awhile so they left to go see a movie or something. Rebecca, Tricia, and I were perfectly happy to walk around some more. There were some FABULOUS stores on that blessed street. I made a few purchases and am very much on my way to looking very "posh". In one of the stores the lady helping us realized halfway through our conversation that we were American. She said she didn't recognize our accents at first because they were "shorter" than usual!? Whatever that means.

At this point in our day we had been on our feet for over 12 hours. Our feet were killing us! We decided this was the perfect time for dinner. We found a little pizza parlour with an all you can eat pizza buffet. We stuffed ourselves with as much food as we could possibly fit in our stomachs. We also had a nice conversation with the lady and her daughter who were seated next to us. She told us where all the fun shops were (although at this point we were all beyond done shopping for the day) and was nice enough to point us in the direction of the train station.

Although we had two hours until our train left, after dinner we decided that we couldn't walk around anymore and wanted to sit down until we had to leave. Sadly this entailed a very long trek uphill to the train station. Our feet were not very happy with us at this point and we could all feel them swelling. It was a lovely feeling. Anyway, we got to the train station and sat on a bench and waited for two whole hours. We were overjoyed when our train arrived.

I had a lovely time in Brighton, but lets just say I'm very excited to sleep in tomorrow.