Brighton (Part 1)

This picture pretty much captures the feeling of Brighton. Bright lights, fun activities with your friends, a sort of child-like delight in what you are doing.

It also captures the natural state of inebriation I was in much of the time, but that is neither here nor there.

Brighton is really quite beautiful. Especially at night. It's kind of amazing how many pictures I managed to take at night, since I was there during the summer and the sun didn't fully set until around midnight. It was a unique experience going outside in the outfit you were wearing to the club while the sun was still shining...

One of the more impressive things in Brighton is the Royal Pavilion. It was undergoing renovations of some sort while I was there, so during the day it was covered in scaffolding, which wasn't very conducive to beautiful photographs. At night, however:

Amazing, right?

I have a really funny story about the Royal Pavilion too. I was friends with the girl across the hall from me, Catherine, and her cousin, Liz. Liz was older than me by a year or too, and a quiet, reserved kind of girl. She was really funny, just in a quiet way. Catherine was the complete and total opposite. She was a goofball, in every sense of the word. So one day, I believe it was this day:

We had a few drinks. That pitcher cost something like four or five pounds, which was a great price. The three of us split it and enjoyed it thoroughly. Then we meandered around, possibly partaking in other drunken activities, and gradually made our way to the bus stop, right in front of the Royal Pavilion. We were waiting for the bus when Liz announced that she had to pee. Like, right now. We told her to just hang in there for a few minutes, we were going to be home soon. Then Liz disappeared. A minute went by. Then another. The bus was coming down the street. Then Liz magically reappeared beside us. We asked her where the hell she was. She replied, "I told you, I had to pee." We asked her where. She pointed to the Royal Pavilion. "How on earth did you pee there?"

"I hopped the fence."

She had seriously climbed over an eight foot fence, relieved herself on the front lawn of the Royal fucking Pavilion (in some bushes), and then climbed back over the fence. In a matter of minutes. There is no way she could have done that sober.

On a completely different day, we all ended up wearing green shirts out. This was unplanned, and even unnoticed by us until we had someone take this picture of us:

(I completely forget that fourth girl's name.) The person who took the picture said something about the green shirt girls, and we all looked at each other and went "Ohhhhhhhhhh..." Catherine's jacket looks blue in this picture, but trust me, it was green. This pub was particularly awesome because of the way we found it. We were either out on the pier or in a restaurant, I forget which, and this guy started talking to us. We chatted with him a bit, and he recommended that we go to a pub called Shakespeare's Head. If we told the bartender that guy had sent us, we would each get a free pint. Never ones to refuse free beer, we got directions and struck out. The pub was somewhat difficult to find, I do remember that part. But we did find it, and that picture up there is us with our free pints. Yay beer!

One of the many things that Brighton is famous for is a place called The Lanes. Or was it The Liens? There were two areas that sounded the same (to my ears anyway), but were two separate places. One of them was a neighborhood of spectacularly colored houses. The other was a whole bunch of shops on streets that made a very intricate maze. You could wander around those streets and find all manner of shops, ranging from fantastic (like an FCUK outlet) to completely bizarre. Case in point:

Before you flood the comments with explanations that vegetarian shoes are real, and they are super great and amazing, blah blah blah, keep in mind that this was 2005, and no one that I knew had ever heard of vegetarian shoes before.

There was also a shop that served us glasses of champagne while we tried on clothes. No wait, that wasn't in Brighton. Where was that? That shop (with the champagne) was where I purchased the green top that I am wearing in the free beer picture. So there's that.

And finally, there is this picture:

I swear to whatever you hold holy, this picture is not altered in any way, shape, or form. I ducked into a shop to use their bathroom, and this is what I found. The entire place was blue. Or, more likely, it was white and they used blue light bulbs. My head started to hurt after mere seconds in there. It was nuts. When I went back out into normal light, everything looked yellow for quite some time. Very unsettling...