UK Road Trip

September 17, 2014 —Brighton and London

Today’s breakfast was pastries from the nearby Waitrose store and coffee in our room. Then we headed for the Lancaster Gate underground station where we bought a day pass. The first train was so packed the people were almost falling out the door. We got on the next train, where we were packed like sardines. We transferred to another line and went to the King’s Cross station where we had to look for some time for Platform 9 3/4. We were in a queue for awhile to get our pictures taken. The two gals were very patient, as most people got shots with their own camera instead of paying the exorbitant price for their photos. We were the oldest people there, and it was lots of fun. Next we took the underground to Victoria Station and bought train tickets to Brighton, the resort town on the English Channel. The train ride took about an hour, and Jay napped most of the way while Barbara read. We walked around Brighton for a couple hours, taking in the Royal Pavilion and the Brighton Pier. Brighton has a population of about 160,000 and there were a lot of tourists in town on this unseasonably warm September day. The people watching was great (saw a man in a bright green beard) and it’s a very dog-friendly place. The Royal Pavilion was built by King George IV, who wanted a vacation home by the sea. Napoleon was causing so much trouble that travel to the continent was difficult, so George could stay in England and entertain at his fancy home in Brighton. We walked along the Brighton Pier, through the arcade and had some ice cream before walking back to the train station. The return trip only took 45 minutes, and we got back on the underground and got off at Green Park. We hadn’t realized we were close to Buckingham Palace, so we went there and took some photos. The guards still look the same, but the real guys were nearby, dressed in black, and were carrying assault rifles. The walls around the palace have lots of dangerous looking coils of wire at the top. We walked next through Hyde Park, where the flowers were still beautiful. There were lots of ducks and swans on The Serpentine, a man-made lake in the park. We had walked almost an hour and a half since we got out of the underground, and logged about 10 miles total today. We were so pooped that we rested for a while and then just had dinner at the hotel—fish and chips and a pint of Stella. We had time to work on the blog before turning in.