This weekend is definitely going down in history as one of the most memorable, and thankfully not for disastrous reasons as one may expect from a trip to the UK’s most famous coastal town in the middle of winter!
After another unsuccessful attempt at booking a weekend in Paris (we will get there one of these days!) we finally settled on a weekend in Brighton if not to go and see the water, at least to get out of our madhouse (story to follow) and have a weekend out of London ( as I discovered Sean has more important plans).
After a wonderful thanksgiving dinner with my work friends at the lovely Jessica’s house on Friday evening, Sean and I woke up feeling still stuffed and not so excited about an early stat on a cold wintry day to get the early train to Brighton. But we made it to the station and a short 1 ¼ hour train ride arrived in Brighton. Walking out of the station we were greeted with the very familiar sound of seagulls, and we spent several minutes searching the nearby building for speakers, convinced it was not actually coming form birds and was really just a tacky tourist gimmick, but it was definitely the sound of real seagulls! Who knew that sound would actually excite us so much! Its surprising what you discover when you deprive yourself of so many things you take for granted at home!
We made our way down to the coast and walked the 15mins along the road to our hotel, planning to just drop our bags as we were way too early for check in, however when we arrived we were told for an extra 10 pound they would upgrade us to a spa suite overlooking the pier which was available immediately, so with a short stop over for a spa (much appreciated after our recent showing conditions in the madhouse) we headed off to explore Brighton, first stop of course was the pier, directly opposite our hotel, where Sean discovered the arcades and carnival attractions, followed by a stroll along the pebble beach, and a wander through the Lanes admiring all the gorgeous little stores and galleries of fantastic artwork. We headed back for another spa, then a drink in the hotel bar, enjoying the view of the pier all lit up. In the tradition of a trip to Brighton we had to have fish n chips on the pier for tea, so rugged ourselves up and had to work up the courage to step out into the cold and walk over to the pier.
Of course we didn’t quite make it to the fish n chip restaurant as we had to pass through the arcade, and Sean just couldn’t walk past all those flashing lights. After he had lost all the coins we had trying to win a teddy bear I finally convinced him to head out to the fish n chip restraint. But he had other ideas, as soon as we stepped out into the cold he whisked me around the corner, with many complaints from me about how cold it was and that there was nothing around here and we needed to go the other way, and surprised me with a beautiful diamond ring. As you could imagine all of a sudden it didn’t seem so cold and I had completely lost my appetite!
The rest of the night involved thinking of anything possible to do to fill in the time until I could call Mum and Dad with our news (it was 3am in Perth when Sean proposed), and of course I couldn’t tell anyone else first. So at 11.30pm Brighton time I rang mum and dad and we sent messages to friends in Perth and our phones ran hot for several hours!
Sunday after an early morning dip in the freezing water where I was sure I had developed frostbite and became frozen with pain to the rocks we went exploring “The Lanes” of Brighton again, with a couple of stops for tea and hot chocolate and time for me to admire my ring some more! Before heading back to London to spread the news there.
Brighton will always hold a special place in my heart, and I am sure we will be returning there again before we head home!
