Day 7 VCUK-15 June 2019

People started getting up and leaving early in the morning and then Guy's cellphone alarm went off a bunch starting at 5amish which was actually quite funny in my opinion. His alarm was the song I Love It by Kanye West and Lil Pump which goes "you're such a fxxckin ho, I love it. You're such a fxxckin ho, I love it. You're boyfriend is a dork, McLovin." Great song (sarcasm). It's funny that this is a 40ish year old man's ringtone and that it's going off repetitively at 5am in a hostel room full of other 40 year old men and here I am.

Eventually he turned it off.

I got up at 8am and changed and went to breakfast downstairs. Breakfast again was toast, cornflakes, milk, orange juice. There was hot water but not tea, good thing I always have tea bags on me.

It was bad and I ended up just drinking the tea really. British milk is weird. The dining hall was strange and was mostly homeless looking adults. There was one lady who had taken up a whole table with papers and was doing a conference call on her computer.

The tv was on some British morning show and I watched it while I charged my phone and drank tea. The show had a segment about quidditch.

When I got my phone up to 100 I went up to the room and hid my backpack under my sheets and then went out for the day. I hope it's still there when I get back. It's locked but honestly there's nothing in it. It's just clothes and body wash. Everything valuable is on me.

I wore my red shorts and jeans tank top today with my jeans jacket. It was sooo nice out and I miss the Jersey shore. I walked the whole boardwalk down to the pier. This morning there was some kind of race happening on the Hove boardwalk.

I walked around the pier boardwalk which was cute. I don't think it was open yet and I don't think I was supposed to be walking around it but no one kicked me out or said anything so it was fine. It was essentially the Point Pleasant boardwalk but smaller and older and goes straight out into the ocean. The big white building on it is an arcade but the games are all relatively new and dumb. Then past that is some more boardwalk games and then a building with a restaurant which looked very posh and cute. Then there was the end of the boardwalk which had all the rides. They had two or three rollercoasters! That's crazy. No way in hell could you get me on one of those. The boardwalk alone was freaking me out a bit cause you could see right through the board slats to the ocean 20 feet below. You could probably drop a phone through the cracks and the boards were very old and creaky.

After that I went inland and wandered around. I eventually made it to the cute area and stumbled upon the Pavillion which is wild! I thought it was a mosque when I first saw it.

I did the museum first and got wifi and chatted with mom. I got a day pass that let me into both the museum and the pavillion and a few other places cause it was cheaper to buy together. The guy at the desk showed me some places to go to and we chatted. He actually has family in Westfield that he visits every summer. They're the Kleins. I don't know them but I bet Carol does.

The museum was eh. It had a lot of random stuff and then the National Geographic photo exhibit, a tiny Egypt exhibit, a Brighton history exhibit, a Brighton archaeological exhibit, an exhibit on Trans culture which was interesting, an exhibit on performance costumes, an exhibit on cultural attire, and an exhibit on clothes in Brighton general. The trans one was the most interesting and creative. It had different objects from different trans people with little tags describing how they were meaningful to them and their journey. It was interesting. Strangest thing was one person had gotten top surgery and kept their boobs in two jars which I thought was quite alarming.

Then I went to the Pavillion. It is actually a palace built by George the 4th who was very lavish. He built it and then continually expanded it and added to it. He was obsessed with the oriental aesthetic and he did the outside as "Indian" style however it really is a European's vision of Indian. The entire inside is similar but in and "asian" aesthetic, or chinoiserie. The entrance hall is this long pink room with murals of bamboo and jade. It has a bunch of these large figurines that nod their heads that are really interesting.

The staircases are gorgeous and are on either side of the room and they are carved and painted to look like bamboo.

The next room is this gorgeous dining room. This room is really crazy. It has a domed cieling and every inch of the room is painted and adorned. The chandolier is 30 feet long and weighs 1 ton. From top to bottom it has a timber silvered dragon that is 12 feet long and then there is a giant mirrored star and then over a thousand crystals and these glass lotus petal things. It was truly amazing.

Then there was a giant kitchen that he sometimes had dining parties in too. There were pillars that were decorated to look like palm trees. Apparently he used to sit in the middle of the table instead of the head so that he was the center of it all.

Then there were some waiting rooms and state room things. Then there's this beautiful red room with a dome. It had a gorgeous carpet and painted mural dorm.

Then there's the music room. The music room was insane. It had a dome that was completely covered in gold gilded shells. It had lotus chandeliers and every inch of the room was covered again. There's also a large organ in one wall. It was amazing. Apparently the room was burnt down by arson years back and just as they finished restoring it there was a large storm and part of the roof collapsed and they had to restore again.

Then it takes you through the king's bedroom and library. He moved his room to the first floor in later years because he was ill and couldn't walk well. His bed had a mechanism that lowered and raised it and he also had a submersion pool and a wheelchair of sorts. In his old age he was quite fat and ill and not well liked by the public. He had a tunnel built from his Pavillion to the dome where the horses were so he could travel without being seen.

There was also an extensive hallway system through the house where the servants traveled which was really interesting and cool.

Upstairs were his brothers bedrooms and a tearoom and victoria's room.

The tearoom was cute and I had a pot of early grey and a scone with cream and jelly and read and sat for a bit.

Victoria's rooms were quite small actually. She didn't particularly like the pavillion because it was very public and had no privacy so she planned to sell it at one point and removed all of the furnishings and fixings to Buckingham storage but never sold them or the building so that's how it was able to be fully restored and refurnished. The building was left to disrepair for awhile and people were allowed to Rome freely through it so in some upper rooms there was graffiti but they've left it that way.

Originally the top dome Rome was supposed to be a Billards room but then was later made into 4 rooms.

I did the audio tour which was really interesting. I really liked the Pavillion and I think I like it even better then Windsor.

After that I wandered around a bit down the different streets cause I heard there was good antique shops and thrifting and stuff. I understand why Carol likes it, it's very them. However, I thought it was eh. The beach area was cute but very carny and the city area was very city and dirty and there were lots of homeless. Yea there were cute quirky shops but I'm not a big shopping person so I didn't really care. The food places were great though. When wandering around I saw Italian Man working in his salon.

After a bit I tried to find this place that I had looked up earlier but I couldn't find it and instead found a Korean food place but it seemed eh and I was in the mood to chill and drink tea and get work done so I left.

I found this amazing little place called Lost in the Lanes and I got a pot of tea and then this really good dinner. It was grilled goat cheese and then sour dough and pesto and grapes and grape puree and apples and microgreens. It was sooooo good.

Then I went back to the hostel cause it was rainy and gross.

When I got back I facetimed mom and said hi to everyone down the shore for father's day. I decided to leave early and go back to London. I was feeling lonely and not very optimistic about the fact that it was supposed to rain all day tomorrow so I'd be stuck inside. I also didn't really want to have to suffer through another sleepless night at the hostel.

I quickly packed up my stuff and checked out with the desk lady. I ran into Richard and Guy and they wished me luck and sadly said goodbye.

Then I essentially ran to the station. My ticket was for Jun 16 so I didn't even know if it would work. I got there just in time for the 7:26pm train and my ticket didn't work so I frantically ran over to the train guy and he let me in and told me to run to platform 6. I just made it on the train. I sat across from a British family with two girls my age.

I read for a little bit but then the dad from the British family started chatting with me. They had gone to Brighton for the day to celebrate their nephew's engagement and had been drinking all day. They had a lovely day and were still going strong drinking little gin mixes from cans. They were very proper and British but tipsy it was cute. I chatted with the dad for the whole ride about traveling mostly and NYC vs London.

I got off at King's Cross and walked back to the flat surprising everyone by coming home early. Krista and Emma were dressed up when I came in and so I asked where we were going.

We left about 10 minutes after I got back and took the train to Brixton. Casey was leading us but it soon became clear that she didn't really have a plan. When we got there it was pretty sketchy and we saw a fight at a McDonalds. We wandered for a bit but ended up taking the tube back at midnight without having a single drink. Brixton was an older crowd and also people dress up really fancy for bars and clubs here. Girls wear heels and dresses like a bat mitzvah and guys wear semi nice stuff. Jake, the one guy that was with us, wasn't allowed in the one bar we tried to get into cause he was wearing "trackpants"(they were nice streetwear track pants).

I was exhausted and went straight to bed when we got back pretty bummed about the bust of a night.