I haven’t been to England since I moved back to Budapest in 2009. I didn’t have much reason to, because I had already traveled almost the entire country. But now a friend of mine invited me to Bournemouth for a few days.
On the day of my arrival, we headed to Brighton.
On the way there, we stopped at the Seven Sisters cliffs, which cover seven peaks over a 22km stretch. I hadn’t been there before; I had seen similar cliffs in Dover at the time. There was a strong wind and the sea was rough, which is actually an ocean. We had lunch on a bench and continued on. After a short walk along the coast, we returned to the car and headed towards Brighton.
I was in Brighton in August 2007, and my favourite place, the Royal Pavilion, was full of green grass and flowers. The Royal Pavilion in Brighton grew from a seaside retreat for George IV into an exotic palace, which was later transformed into its current domed-minaret form between 1815 and 1823. The interiors follow Chinese and Indian motifs, and the palace now functions as a museum. It is the city’s biggest attraction.
Another attraction is the pier, which opened in 1899. It is more than half a kilometre long; it has a theatre; a hall full of slot machines and slot machines; a restaurant; and at the very end, a small amusement park. At the time, the hall was still used as a reading room and restaurant. Even Charlie Chaplin is said to have performed there before he emigrated to America. The pier hasn’t changed much, but it could do with a repaint, and not everything in the amusement park is operational any more.
And these are the pictures from 2007, as the saying goes, “everything was better in the old days.”
