Friday, May 21, 2010

Friday, May 21,2010

Wow. I tell you what sir, wow.

Well, here we are in Brighton, southern England. We don't have class today and we only have a concert tomorrow evening back in London, so we thought we would take a little trip down here to Brighton and see what it is all about. Scott and Michelle came down here in the week they had before the study abroad started.
The weather today is absolutely gorgeous—75 degrees and sunny. Quite the rarity for England. We (Danny Gray, Chris Buttars, Michelle, Scott, Jessica Jardine, Jonny Litster, Robert McClellan, and I) left this morning from the flats at about 7:20 and caught a bus down here to Brighton. Upon arriving here, we went looking for a bathing suit for Jessica. I got the basic feel for the town while we were doing that. I really liked it, actually. Well, I suppose that “actually” is not necessarily the right word, since I've been in love with pretty much every town I've seen on this trip.

Anyway, the town is situated on hills descending down to the sea, separating France and England and reminds me of most European beach towns I've seen in films and the like. Tight alleyways meander from street to street, most of them packed with stores, cafes, restaurants, pubs, etc. The streets have little rhyme or reason to the way they are set up (or at least not that I could tell). People, mostly tourists, from what I could tell, litter the streets and shops, eating food, buying clothes and souvenirs, large quantities of alcohol and cigarettes, and probably drugs, given the night life we later saw. In spite of all those last few purchases, Brighton was really quite a quaint beach town. I really liked it.

After shopping around a bit, we headed to the beach to meet up with Jonnie, Scott, and Robert. The beach actually didn't have any sand—rocks instead—but I liked it no less. Luckily, the rocks were mostly small, so when we lay down on them, they conformed to our body shape and it was actually pretty comfortable. We spent a good four or five hours lying around on the beach, talking, playing games, hopping briefly into the water (oh my cold! I just looked up the water temperature and the average for the month of May is 52 degrees), and people watching. It was super pleasant and relaxing. I often play pretty hard, so it was pretty refreshing to kick back a bit. After a while, we packed up our things and hit the town. We were going to tour a palace of a prince who had entirely too much money, but decided it didn't look worth our money.

So we went off to wander the town, exploring all those alleyways we had previously seen. Among them was a REALLY cool armor shop that had armor and weapons from just about any period of wartime imaginable. It was really cool.

Today was Scott and Michelle's six month mark of being together, so they wanted some alone time. We split up for a bit and got dinner separately. Chris, Danny, Jessica, and I went to a cheap little pub and had really fun, pleasant conversation for a good two hours before heading out to find a hostel to sleep in and meet up with the rest of the group. Scott and Michelle wanted to go to the pier and do carnival-like activities and we wanted to see Robin Hood, so we split up for a while with plans to meet up after the film.

And I am happy to report that it was quite a good film! It was about all the story leading up to Robin Hood being....Robin Hood. But no actual robbing from the rich and giving to the poor. It was pretty long, but packed with action and drama and I believe a promise of at least a sequel, perhaps two.

Anyway, upon leaving the theater, I came out alone because I had to use the bathroom (or “toilet” as they say here) and came out at the entrance of a club. That's where the beginning line of this blog comes from (“Wow. I tell you what, sir—wow.”). Let's just say that Babylon is alive and well. Suddenly, night life in Brighton had just exploded and it was no longer a quaint, pleasant beach town, but rather a buzz of late teens and young adults heading to clubs. I was amazed to find very few people above the age of 25 wandering the streets. Anyway, the immodesty of the girls was incredible. Most were drunk as they wandered from club to club, and I'm guessing some were high as well, given what we had heard of Brighon when we were in Cambridge yesterday.

Seeing all of them was pretty dang humorous. There were quite a few shouting matches between couples, followed quickly by make-up (make-out) sessions. Writing about it now actually makes me pretty sad for them and the state of the world, but at the time, it was pretty funny. We decided the enterainment was good, so we went wandering about the town for a while, people watching. We wandered around on the streets, making sure the girls were close to us at all times and then headed down to the beach, where two girls from Essex overheard us speaking and immediately became obsessed with us, by virtue of our being American.

So we talked with them for a while and then headed back out on the town for more entertainment. We decided to go to a pub just to see what it was like and it was basically as we had expected: loud music, lots of alcohol (heavens, it smelled in there), but without all the nasty dancing, actually. I guess if we had gone to a proper club, we would have seen some of that.

Anyway, after wandering around a bit, we finally found a place to sleep and called it a night. And here I am now.