Brighton Pier and the Royal Pavilion

Friday, April 8

Our last "coach trip" was down to the coast at Brighton.  We visited the Royal Pavilion at Brighton and spent a good bit of the day relaxing around the water at the Brighton Pier.  Brighton is a resort town where a lot of Londoners go to relax and enjoy the sunshine.  The Pier is an entertainment venue complete with carnival rides and games, shopping and the kinds of foods you get at a fair.  

The beach is actually rock, and rather large rock at that.  It was not easy to walk on the rocks and wouldn't be any fun at all barefoot.  We did walk down close to the water and take off our shoes to get our feet wet, but we didn't want to stay in the water long at all--it was ice cold.

By the middle of the day, the beach was covered with people.  It was interesting the contrast.  There were people in bathing suits (it was warm, but it wasn't that warm), people dressed about like we were (short sleeves and jeans), and even some nicely dressed people who'd probably just come down from their office for a break.  I guess that's an advantage of the rocks--you'd never see someone lying on the sand at Destin, Florida, wearing business clothes.  But you did see that at Brighton on the rocks.

The Royal Pavilion was built by George IV as a kind of vacation home.  It is not exactly a typical English house, as the pictures show.  The outside theme is clearly based on India.  The building was put together in several stages, but the final stage tied all the buildings together with the "Taj Mahal" look.

Inside, the building is even more extreme.  It's a mixture of Indian and Chinese themes, but not necessarily perfectly done ones.  After all, in the early 1800s, how many people had actually been to India or China?  So many of the decorative elements aren't quite right--there are dragons, but they are English dragons rather than Chinese dragons.  There is oak and elm made to look like bamboo.  It is a 19th century British picture of a far away world.  The inside decorations are impressive.  They really look like they belong somewhere like Las Vegas.  There is one gorgeous chandelier in the main banqueting hall that cost--in modern dollars--about half a million dollars.  George IV was not overly popular as a king--he was seen as spending significantly on himself without caring about his people.

 As seems to happen a lot with the Brits, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside.  This one was a bit annoying because I think the only reason was to be able to sell pictures.  If you want to get an idea of the opulence inside, check out the website:

Brighton Inside


Be sure to look at the banqueting room and the music room.

Rides on the pier

Looking over the beach from the pier

Looking through the "Big Green Doughnut" on the pier that turned out to be an abstract globe