Brighton
Thursday, September 29th, 2011As I said in last week’s post, I went to Brighton last Wednesday with the other Study Abroad studentsand the British
Life and Culture class I am in. The trip was great! When we got there, we took a short bus tour of town, then went on a short walking tour to see where we needed to meet for our tour of the Brighton Royal Pavilion.
The tour ended in the area of town called “The Lanes”. This area is one of the main shopping parts of Brighton. We went to the North Lanes to shop around and most of the stores were small souvenir shops, many of which sold Mod-style souvenirs. This was pretty neat. There were also quite a few cafes. I stopped at one to get a PASTY! Yes, England loves pasties, almost as much at the UP. I have seen shops all over in London, Kingston Upon Thames, and Brighton.After wandering around The Lanes, I made my way to the Brighton Museum, which was filled with a very diverse collection of art and artifacts. There was also a lot of information about Brighton’s history, including history about King George IV (who had the Royal Pavilion built) and Brighton’s large gay community.
Later, I went on a tour of the Royal Pavilion with part of the class. The Pavilion was amazing. The outside is Indian-themed and the inside is Chinese-themed. I learned on the tour that a lot of the Chinese-themed decorations are not actually correct because those who designed them had never been to China. This included some figurines meant to look like Chinese people,
but some of the women’s heads were put on men’s bodies and visa-versa. In the end, it was beautiful and I learned a great deal about British history and the Pavilion itself. Tip: I would definitely recommend touring the Royal Pavilion.
Once the tour was over, I went to the main pier, another main attraction in Brighton. The pier has a small amusement park and, similar to San Francisco’s Pier 39, an arcade along with many food booths. It also gives you a great view of (and brings you close to) Brighton’s beautiful beach.
The Brighton trip was great. I can’t wait for the other trips I will be going on with the British Life and Culture class!