Brighton, England

I got from Liverpool to Brighton for £6. How awesome is that? Sure, I had to pay to put a bit more money on my Oyster card to ride from the train station to the bus station in London and to ride the bus in Brighton when I didn't want to carry my luggage and the groceries Lisa and I bought up Elm Grove (re: the never-ending hill to get to her house), but I'm still pretty damn proud of myself. I got a Megatrain from Liverpool to London for £5 and then a National Express funfare from London to Brighton (2 hours) for £1. Win. If I had wanted to wake up freakishly early enough to take an 8:30 am train, that would've been only £1 as well.

Sadly though, almost immediately upon my arrival to Brighton my camera stopped working mysteriously. This is probably because I tend to just throw it in my bag without a case and hope for the best, but it did last me 4 years. Since I lived in Brighton for a year in 2007-2008 and was around both last summer for Pride and in December for Christmas I have enough pictures to give you a taste of this wonderful town.

So what did I do in Brighton? Well, mostly I sat on Lisa's couch and studied German. No really, I'm pretty boring. After four months of traveling, I was tired of being a tourist. I did live here a year already, so it was nice to just have some down time. Plus all my friends were finishing their dissertations and studying for exams, which motivated me to study for the fake German exam I have in my head (re: speaking to a Smith professor in May so she can evaluate my likelihood of learning enough German to qualify for the Fulbright). I popped into Allsorts Tuesday to say hello (a queer youth group in town I joined when I was studying at Sussex, which gives you free dinner!), went out to Legends at some point with Lisa, Elea and their friends, got my hairz did, FINALLY got my free coffee at Red Roaster and ate way too many vegan Co-op custard and jam doughuts. Two packages for £1 is really the death of me.

On April 30th Emma W drove Emma K and me into London to Emma K's house. We made a wrong turn and ended up having to drive through the center of London, which took like 5 billion hours, but it was a nice tour! Once we got to Emma's house we met up with her sister Holly and her Mom and headed to this restaurant near Camden Town that was supposed to have crazy good ice cream for Emma K's birthday. Being vegan, I went for the sorbet with fresh bananas and it was super yummy. Mostly I was a giant sick face my last several days in England as one of my glands swelled up super big and I seemed to develop a fever (for 10 days), which I'll go more into later. Germs suck.

Here's some past times in Brighton for ya:

Lisa (former flatmate at Sussex Uni), Lizzie and me last summer at the Marlborough, this mostly lesbian pub we used to live at the year I lived in Brighton (they had free pool!).

Walking along Brighton Pier, which is full of fried snacks, candy, arcades and rides!

Last summer from the left Lucy, Emma W and Helen. Brighton has a rock beach, which everyone but me seems to hate. What I hate, however, is getting sand all over my body. I finally swam in the sea in Brighton for the first time last August!

At Brighton Pride last summer, which is basically the gayest gay that ever gayed. The entire town shuts down for this, tooooons of people flock to the city and then everyone follows the parade to Preston Park at the end, which is MASSIVE and filled with outdoor clubbing tents, giant rides, lots of stands with food, condoms, t-shirts, sex toys, etc. It was freaking massive. The only negative part was if you had to pee (I did) you had to wait FOREVER and toilet paper was scarce. Also, it rained on our parade that year. I thought this reference to Little Britain was especially funny. The Oldest Gay in the Village.

Lisa and I last summer at The George, a vegetarian pub I was obsessed with that had the best pub quiz EVER and the best vegan nachos everrrr. I freaking love me some vegan nachos. This is likely us after devouring an entire pitcher of Pimms.

Brighton Beach as seen from the Pier.

The Wreck. I think at one point this was supposed to be the or a pier and then it, well, was wrecked. It basically just reminds me of Sugar Rush, an awesome British lesbian TV show that takes place in Brighton. Watch it!

And another view of The Wreck that I took with Kaden a couple years ago on a super stormy day.

The Royal Pavilion

Next Stop: America!

Chester & Liverpool: Part II

You just lost The Game. Sorry. If it's any consolation, so did I and all those in Liverpool who saw this graffiti. After escaping Barnacre Farm, Hayley and I couchsurfed in Liverpool for three nights with a guy named Julian who offered to take us in in the middle of the week with only 24 hours notice. Not only did he give us space on his couch, he gave us an entire room, blankets, shampoo, tours around Liverpool and a plethora of gnome stories. When I realized I left my phone charger at the farm (and thus lost it forever), he also offered me a manual phone charger (think those flashlights that you wind up to get light), but after some 15 minutes of cranking, I gave up. Being without a phone my last 2 weeks of traveling won't kill me, I suppose.

Julian, our host, gave us a tour of the football clubs in Liverpool. I know literally nothing about football, or any sports really, unless rock climbing and my brief stint on a softball team in the 4th grade count, so I'm afraid most of it was lost on me, but it was interesting nonetheless. This is at the Everton Football Club, walking distance from where Julian lived. It's a memorial to about 100 fathers and sons who got trampled to death during a game, leading to all the stadium rooms phasing out all standing room seats in favor of actual sitting down seats only.

My friend Hayley's cousin really likes football, so she made them a sign to take a picture with in front of the Liverpool Football Club. This sort of turned into an experiment to see how many places we could get pictures with this sign. This is me on the left and our host on the right. I've never met you Patty and Kiz, but I hope you're having a great time in Australia.

Our best one though was convincing the guy at the chip shop to let us take his picture with the sign. Salt and vinegar? What a good sport.

I was bad at taking photos in Liverpool. We met up with Holly and her friends at some point, spent a lot of time at the Egg Cafe, catching up on internet and eating delicious veg food and going to bed at 9:00 pm. Then it was off back to Chester! On our first day back, we walked along the medieval walls and were given a bit of a tour of the city. Here is what I'm assuming is one of the guard towers built into the walls.

Here's the front of the Designated Pidgeon Feeding Area. Possibly the biggest birdhouse I've ever seen. We could also call this the designated pidgeon shitting area perhaps, which was the plan, as Chester was tired of them going everywhere and thus attempted to lure them to this one specific location.

Chester Cathedral. I always have the same problem photographing cathedrals: You can never get the whole thing in the photo from where you're standing and you can never get far back enough to fix that.

The main street in Chester. It's apparently somewhat unique in that in some places it has two floors of stores. This is especially handy when it rains, so you can walk around the second floor uninhibited by the drizzly grossness.

During our tour, Ollie led us into a Spud-U-Like jacket potato makin' chain to our surprise. As none of us had mentioned wanted to order a potato, I was a bit confused. Lo and behold, in the downstairs seating area was an ancient Roman Hypocaust, which is an ancient Roman system of central heating. As it was not advertised as such from above, it was an exciting surprise. Above you typical brightly colored and plastic-y chain fast food scheme, below....ancient ruins!

Here's a better picture of the Hypocaust.

We took a short trip to Habitat so Gulli could buy some silicone cupcake containers with his tax refund. Okay, I lied, it wasn't short. We love home decorating stores and pretty kitchen appliances. Hayley found a tipi. Now that we're tipi experts we had to check it out. Our verdict? The decorating scheme was much better, but you REALLY wouldn't fit 12 people in here. I also found a really badass fort bed. Want.

Chester has a river and it is pretty. View from one side of the bridge.

View from the other side.

Walking through the park, which has a TINY TRAIN YOU CAN RIDE ON!! I would have taken a whirl if it had cost less than 50p, but alas, it cost 80. I'm currently very, very cheap.

A tomb built into the structure of these ruins up high! Uhhh whaaaat?!

No, f'realz. Crazy shit.

Ollie gazing longingly into the window space. Everyone was abnormally attracted to this area.

Example A: We Love Small Spaces. And taking pictures in them.

More of the ruins. There are lots of them in Chester.

Gulli says, "I want to have a party right here!" Let's do it. Only really small-footed people so we can all fit on the stone.

So there you go, a proper touristy post about Chester. I would have done it last time, but it was way too cold and rainy so I chose sitting inside, eating vegan custard doughnuts instead.

Chester & Liverpool: Part I

I really don't like taking planes. So I took a 7-hour ferry from Dublin to Liverpool, which basically flew by because I made a friend to play cards with, hangout and have some afternoon beers with. Here's the thing, when you take a plane it ends up not actually being much shorter. Why? Because you always have to get to the airport (+1 hour), you have to get there early (+2 hours for within the EU), take the flight (+1 hour in this case) and then you have to get from the airport to town (+1 hour). That's a total of 5 hours and my ferry was only 7 and a lot less trouble. Plus it was only 45 euro as a foot passenger with unlimited baggage. If you're ever going from Dublin to Liverpool, I recommend the Norfolk Line Ferries (http://www.norfolkline.com). P&O Ferries goes the same route, but you can only go with a car.

The funny part is, the first thing I thought when I saw this play area was "nap". But apparently enough people had the same idea that they actually had to make that sign. Oops.

After an epic walk to the Hamilton Square train station with a random drunk man, I finally got on the train to Chester and was greeted by Gulli at the station. Once there I was fed well and treated to wine and some sweet home style dining. This is Ollie, Laura and Gulli bein' all cute at the dinner table. Gulli's interpretation of cute is a bit different from theirs, it seems.

Of course, Gulli and Ollie force fed us lots of wine. Here is Laura being a "victim". Thus, the whole time I was there I mostly just giggled and drunk Skyped. And ate more.

This is the face he makes when he likes you.

Chester is pretty! The canal we walked along to get to the train station.

Chester apparently has the only fully intact medieval walls in England. But it also has a designated pidgeon feeding area.

Our trip to Liverpool was right before Easter and I found this sign particularly hilarious. Easter EGGsperience. Bwahahaha.

There's all these really interesting/kinda cute messages around Liverpool about being close to your neighbors and stuff that I really like. This one says, "6.8 million people live alone in England. Do you feel lonely?"



And this one, "There are 3951 people for every km2 in this city. Do you like your neighbors?"

While the China Town of Liverpool is not very impressive, this gate is. I did go into a pretty epic Asian food store though where I became obsessed with peanut mochi and further fed into my instant noodles habit. That's literally what I'm been living on (and hummus) since I'm getting really low on that money thing. I really like instant noodles though, so I guess it's okay.

Action shot! I'm really good at taking attractive photos of people.

Liverpool! Near the Tate Modern, which was free! My favorite was the 2nd floor where they gave you headphones blasting techno and you got to dance while looking at the art. Art is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING while dancing.

At the very top you can sort of see the Liva bird. This tower has two of them facing away from each other that are both chained to the building. The story is that if the chains are released they'll turn around, fall in love and fly away and then Liverpool will cease to exist. Aww.

Níl Gaeilge agan & lots of craic!

On March 25th I hopped a plane from Berlin to Dublin. I had spent my last few days in Berlin getting rid of as much stuff as I could, giving any clothing I didn't need to charity etc. to get my suitcase, which was 25 kilos upon arrival in Berlin to the required 15 kilo limit of Ryanair. I even got a new suitcase (because the wheels fell off the old one the day before I left). Even though I wore everything I could and filled my carry-on to capacity, I only managed to get it down to 19 kilos and had to pay 20 euro PER EXTRA KILO. I pretty much cried at the airport. My flight was only 35 euro. Fuck you Ryanair.

Anyway, I finally made it to Dublin and caught the Aircoach to Julia's flat. She's studying abroad in Dublin for the year so...visits! We made cookies! I think I've made cookies with everyone I've visited so far, but I really like cookies, so whatever. It was weird and exciting to be in an English-speaking country again for the first time since December. I basically gizzed myself when I remembered that hummus exists in regular grocery stores (Tesco) outside of Continental Europe. I think I ate 4 large containers of it in the 5 days I as there. NOM.

We got to walk through this park every day on the way to town from Julia's flat. These ducks were confused and thought this fountain was their pond even though their real pond was some 50 feet away. Really, they just made me really jealous that they got to play in the fountain. I love ducks.

Wandering around an area of Dublin called Temple Bar there were lots of bands playing Irish-inspired music on the streets. This guy played violin from behind his back. It was pretty cool!

This is pretty cute.

We met up with Julia's Irish friends at a pub and I made them teach me Irish. I can say "How much for a lesbian?" and "A pint of Guinness please." Among a lot of other weird shit. So clearly, I am fluent now.

There are a LOT of taxis in Dublin. Look at it, it blows my mind. Apparently they just made some law that makes it a lot easier for people to become taxi drivers, so they basically multiplied like rabbits.

Julia's flatmate Alice and her in the park by the water. Pretty!

St. Patrick's Cathedral on the way to the Dublin Flea Market on Sunday. I managed to barter the price of a cute dress down to 6.50 euro from 10. Win!

I thought this was pretty cool-looking. On the way to the flea market.

Julia bought a nest at the flea market. And then she ATE it!

Reading some crazy hilarious Christian Fundamentalist pamphlet she found on the street. It provided a solid 5 minutes of entertainment. "Someone gave this to you because they care about you." What does it mean if we found it as trash on the sidewalk? The pavement cares about us? Clearly.

Somebody lost their boobs.

I went to Starbucks to "study" with Julia and Alice. Mostly they kinda studied and I did the second chapter of my teach yourself German book. I'm working on it. I took this picture because the contrast between Alice's Philosophy reading and Julia's Calculus is pretty funny. Also, I got free soymilk and internet at Starbucks because I had an American Starbucks Rewards card that someone gave me. It didn't even have any cash on it. Win. They should give you free internet at Starbucks in America for having a Rewards card. Maybe they do by now, we'll see.

At a show store called Schuh Julia tried on these crazy heels with hot green goblin mouths on them. I think they're pretty ballin', though how someone can walk with heels that high baffles me.

Most importantly, we sat in baskets. Metal ones. Yes, what I did in Dublin was mostly eat hummus, walk around, take pictures of weird shit and go on the internet. But that's okay with me. Guinness was too expensive anyway, though I did manage to finish my first pint of it there, so I'd say I had a successful Irish experience? Oh, and in case you were wondering...

striapach = whore
beoir = beer
An féidir lion bean aerach a fháil? = Can I get a lesbian?
Dia dhuit = Hi
Is maith lion cailíní = I like girls.
deathcore = bás croí-lárnach.
Pionta Guinness leo'thoil =Pint of Guinness please!