Monday, October 7, 2013

Brighton

This weekend was going to be nice according to BBC forecast. I had dinner on Friday with my boss from the US and a couple of people from work. My boss' daughter happerned to be here for work too. she joined us for dinner. I went home first to take care of Chloe. Right before I left, Jessica, Amy's friend that I met last week, Facebooked me and said she wanted to go to Brighton this weekend. I was planning to  play tourist by touring the city on a double decker, but Brighton seems to be a good idea too. It's an hour South of London. It's by the beach but It's not a beach that you can swim in. I agreed to meet her for bruch on Saturday.

I went to dinner at Strada, an Italian restaurant by London Bridge. This is the view from our table. We were on the second floor. It was all glass wall facing Thames river.
Not a bad picture since it was taken from inside the restaurant.

A ship was passing through and the bridge was up. The food was good. We had antipasti for appetizer. I had seafood risotto and pistachio & dark chocolate gelato for dessert, and a glass of Pinot Grigio. It tasted even better since my boss paid!

The next day I went to Caravan by King's Cross station. This is one thing about London. It's easy to get around, especially I leave by two stations that run a lot of lines. I don't miss driving. I already my food when I looked at the menu at home. The restaurant was cute. It was a loft style. You can tell it was a refurbished building. JalapeƱo corn bread, black bean and eggs. I had high hope but the food was disappointing. We sat by two British girls. One of them heard the waiter asked me where we're from. She told me that she went to Emory for grad school. Small world! 

Jessica and I talked about tomorrow's plan. We bought tickets from St. Pancras to Brighton. St. Pancras is a big station. King's Cross was even bigger. Both have tube and train stations. A half billion dollar was pumped into this station for restoration. It's the nicest train station I've ever seen. 
St Pancras has a nice architectural design also. Kings cross is where Harry Porter was filmed. See the cart that is planted to the wall?

When we were there, kids queued to take pictures posing with the cart. Cute. 

Sunday morning I got up early and met up with Jessica at the station. The weather was perfect, sunny. It's funny that my first day here was sunny too, and Trevor, the driver who picked me up said, don't get used to it. I've had nice weather pretty much every day since I came. 

The first place that we headed to was the Pavilion, this was the beach house that George IV built. He spent a lot of (tax) money to build it. Partially to get away from his crazy dad, Mad George. I learned that his hair was laden with arsenic most likely from his wig. It contained over 300 times the toxic level. No wonder he lost his mind. Poor Georgie. Back to George IV, he had Asian Fetish. All of the decorations were Chinese theme from the wallpaper to the dragon chandelier. He was also a foodie. He brought top chefs from France to work at the pavilion. 

The outside actually had Indian architectural design.

We walked along the pier.
No swim on this beach.

Fish, chips and mushy peas for lunch. They looked good, but actually they didn't taste good. You have to add salt because it has no taste at all, apparently that's how Brits make theirs, no salt in the batter, add salt and malt vinegar on the side. I had to have ketchup. They were stingy, only gave me one packet, had to ask for more. I hardly ate my food and so hungry 3 hours later. 
Walked around the lines. Nice restaurants and cute shops.

Finally good food! My first afternoon tea in UK or actually ever... The bottom plate is the sandwiches: cucumber, smoked salmon and cheese. The second tier is pound cakes with frosting, lemon and blueberry scones. They tasted more like biscuit, moist not dry. The lemon one came with lemon preserves. I could lick the tiny serving cup. So good. The top tier is chocolate eclaire and mini banana butterscotch pies. We washed them down with earl gray tea. They were actually plenty of options for tea, but we just went with the basic. 

I had my first taste of train issue on the way back. After we got to London, the train lost signal and sat on the track for almost an hour. Long day, I just wanted to go home. And the next day, on the way home, I got to Woking station, the trains going to London Waterloo were halted. Somebody got hit between Woking and Waterloo. Not sure if it's an accident or suicide. I had to take a train from Woking to Guildford, then back to Woking then finally Waterloo. I didn't get home until 7.30. Two days in a row. Below is the crazy tea house. Full of Diana's and Queen Lizzie's memorabilia.

























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