Brighton -- Monday

[klwilliams]

This was a great day. We staggered awake and made our way to Victoria Station, where we bought train tickets for Brighton. I then called mevennen to let her know which train we were coming in on. Fortunately, she had given me her phone number in the exact form I needed to call from London, so it only took me a couple of tries to figure out the pay phone and make the call. (I had assured her that I looked just like my LJ icon, only older, fatter, shorter hair, never wear makeup, and don't dress like that.) Since mevennen looks just like her LJ icon, we had no trouble finding each other at the station.

The first thing we did, sensibly, was go get some tea, and have a chance to sit and chat. If you ever get an opportunity to sit and chat over a cup of tea with mevennen, I recommend it, as she is just as charming and intelligent in person as she appears over the Internet. (Only she's taller.) We then went from there to lunch, in a place that was kind of art deco-fifties, if I'm remembering right. I ordered nachos, and they were pretty good, though they used big corn chips instead of tortilla chips.

We then wandered through an area of funky shops not unlike Santa Cruz, on our way to the Brighton Pavillion. Ah, the Pavillion. Imagine if William Randolph Hearst really were royalty, and really, really liked India and China. You'd come close. The Pavillion has wonderful rooms, decorated floor to ceiling and everywhere in between with wonderful, glittery stuff. For example, the dining room, which is bigger than my entire house, has a palm tree tops painted on the ceiling, and a carved dragon on the chandelier pole. There is gold plate at every setting. It was marvelous. And that was just the dining room. There was a music room, a parlor, some bedrooms, a great big entrance hall -- it was marvelous. There's also a painting in one of the rooms, titled "The Prince Regent Awakens the Spirit of Brighton". The Spirit of Brighton is a beautiful naked woman, pretending to be asleep with all her might, while the naked Prince Regent, a rather dumpy middle-aged man with all his naughty bits hidden by a sash, with a leer on his face and a huge eye staring out toward us, is leaning towards her as if to grope her. You can see pictures of the Pavillion here, but for some reason I can't find the painting online.

After that, we window shopped some more around the various shops, then walked along the beach and saw the famous Brighton Pier (OK, the new famous Brighton Pier, and the burned out shell of the old famous Brighton Pier). I had heard that the beach there didn't have sand, but I hadn't realized that it had largish pebbles, like the kind used in flower beds. We also saw the stand where mevennen used to read the Tarot once upon a time.

We all three (me, mevennen, and acanthusleaf) caught the train back to London, where we went to Chinatown in Soho and had dinner. Two of the three dishes were very bland, but the fried duck was good, and the company was great. As we wandered through Soho to meet up with some of mevennen's friends, we passed Lee Ho Fook's Chinese restaurant (made famous in "Werewolves of London"), and acanthusleaf took a picture. We'd just eaten, or we could have had beef chow mein there.

We met mevennen's friends in a pub in Soho called The Jerusalem, which was a big room with a Medieval feel to it in the basement of the building. mevennen's friends were a lot of fun, as one would expect, and included claire_weaver, M. (who I only knew of previously as a fellow who allowed China Mieville to shave his head), C. (who looks like Harrison Ford with long hair), and S. (a very nice guy). Drinks were had by many, and fun was had by all.

Afterwards, we walked down Oxford St. to the tube station, where we all caught various trains home, and to bed.