Brighton

For our first trip out of London we decided to go to Brighton, a little city on the south coast of England. We spent 2 days and 2 nights walking around the city, visiting Drusillas Zoo and Park, driving through the countryside, and relaxing in the hotel. It was a fantastic weekend. Here is a little bit (or a lot a bit) about our adventure.

It was beautiful:
(i did not take these pictures, because my camera is not capable, BUT it did look EXACTLY like this)

The pier extends out 524 meters (that's a little over 1700 feet for us Americans!) over the water, and is full of shops, restaurants, arcades, and has a huge carnival at the end.

We rode the train into Brighton on Thursday evening and spent the night in a hotel along the waterfront. The next morning we planned to rent a car and take the kids to Drusillas Park (a zoo, playground, Thomas the Train park, and much, much more...).

This is where the real fun begins:

here is Jonathan... with the steering wheel on the right, driving on the left.......in a manual none the less (because he was too cheap to spring for the automatic)! with the odds stacked against him, we somehow made it out of the parking lot and on the road. 40 minutes and 2 or 3 car stalls later (one of which was in the middle of a round about.) we finally made it to Drusillas Park:

we walked through the zoo part first. it was an incredible zoo, very interactive and educational, perfect for kids... in fact we saw a couple school groups going through as well. the boys had a great time looking at all the different animals, and touching and playing with everything along the way.

couldn't pass up this little gem.... (what an appropriate look on Adam's face... "my dad is such a dork.")

.... that's more like it

after the zoo part, we ventured into the gigantic park area... this was hands down the most amazingly fun park I've ever seen. endless slides, jungle gyms, swings, zip lines, trampolines, mazes, the list could go on, seriously, it was incredible.

this wasn't even half of the park... SO FUN!

i had to throw this one in there, i thought it was cute that blake wanted to catch daddy when he came out of the slide

Now we come to what originally attracted us to this park... Thomas the Train

i was a bit disappointed in the lack of actual 'Thomas' stuff to do (their website was quite misleading), but the boys were not... which is ALL that matters! They got to ride around the park in Thomas' coaches, see some other Thomas characters, and of course there was a huge gift shop, but that was about it.

they loved it!

After we left the park we decided to go for a drive and let Adam take a nap. We didn't realize that we ALL miss having a car... they both fell right asleep and we enjoyed the drive. We started driving toward a little town that a taxi cab driver had told Jonathan about just to see some of the countryside, and it was gorgeous, like really gorgeous... green rolling hills, leaves changing on the trees, old beautiful houses (with the occasional CASTLE in the middle of nowhere). As we got further into the towns the roads got more and more narrow, and were lined with walls of shrubs cut to the exact width of the road. People were driving SO fast toward us and riding our bumper from behind. I was sitting on the wrong side of the car and it seemed that we were going to crash at any moment. Between Jonathan's staring out the window at the country side and veering into either the wall of shrubs or oncoming traffic i thought i might either throw up or have a heart attack. 2 hours later after my body was trying to recover from continuous surges of adrenaline i was spent... so much for a relaxing drive through the country!

AS WRITTEN BY JONATHAN:

Lesson Learned: After having a nice three hour drive through small towns and the country side my shoulders and neck were quite sore. I recommend braking the bank and springing for the automatic. Having a GPS is essential in a foreign country, unfortunately after a couple of wrong turns and a few recalculations by the GPS you may end up on a single lane farming road. GPSs may know every road there is, but just because a farmer names his dirt road that doesn't make it a legitimate road. Then just when you are miles into the brush and there is no place to turn around you just have to forge ahead. The only problem is when you see an oncoming car and think CRAP. A lesser man couldn't have done it.

All in all we had a great weekend!