Extras from Wednesday, Brighton Trip

If you look here http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page41.asp you can experience my Wednesday night too! I saw the Cabinet Room, the State Dining Room, and the Pillared Room was where the reception was taking place. The White Hall Room furniture looks like what was in the room where the PM and George Bush had their chat, but it’s in a different layout – so I don’t know if it’s the same room or not. My guess is not because the White Room looks a little bit smaller.

The welcome area was downstairs on the main floor, but the reception was upstairs. To get upstairs, we used THE grand staircase. I walked up and down it a few times, no big deal. Just using some stairs in 10 Downing Street. Sorry, I’m still a bit excited over this.

So 5 out of 8 on the virtual tour! Not bad!

Also, I got the names mixed up with the Chapman person I thought I was talking about – it was really Chiwetel Ejiofor. The guy that marries Kiera Knightly in Love Actually. And Richard Branson’s sister was there, she was really lovely. Okay, enough about Wednesday.

Thursday at work was spent figuring out the above information, sorting out some more administrative stuff about the reception, and then researching a bill that was on the floor in Scottish Parliament on Wednesday. I had to call them up and I could barely understand what they were saying, but the accent was sweeeet. I also had a realllly good pesto-chicken salad sandwich for lunch from the little café right next door to our office. Deeeelish. Thursday night we went out to a bar in Islington called King’s Head. They had this crazy bluegrass-ish kind of band playing, it was pretty fun.

Then on Friday we were off to Brighton! We ended up missing our 11am bus, but managed to catch the noon bus, so it was all good. We didn’t have any accommodations going into it (my first ever non-planned trip), so we walked around a bit, and found a really great place – the Urban House. It was a block from the beach and as you can see on Flickr, we had a pretty sweet room. We walked down to the beach, had some lunch at a café along the boardwalk, walked around town for a long time, and then ended up back at the room for the rest of the night. We watched a variety of things, including a GREAT Euro Cup game between Croatia and Turkey. Such a great game. We actually had a really really good time just goofing around in the room, definitely created a lot of “you had to be there” moments. :-)

Today we had our complimentary breakfast at our hotel (between us we had musli, croissants, yogurt, cereal, fruit, toast, tea and coffee...it was perfect), then walked around The Lanes (shopping district) and then went to Chockywockydoodah, which was a little place that sold cake and chocolate. And that’s it. None of us could finish our cake because it was so incredibly rich. I might have diabetes now. But oh was it good. And then we saw Mr. Weasley from Harry Potter.

Brighton was a lot of fun! It’s apparently a big destination for bachelor/bachelorette parties…today we saw a guy in a tutu and pink tights walking around, it was pretty hilarious. The weather was okay...it was overcast the whole time, but it was somewhat warm today so sitting on the beach was fun. We took some cool pictures on Laura’s camera, so one day I’ll have those to show as well.

Tonight will involve…..prrrrobably nothing. I actually don’t feel great. The bus ride home was rough – I don’t really get motion sickness of any kind, but the stopping and starting in London traffic can make anyone sick, I swear. Plus, the cake from this afternoon was so good but I’ve been eating really healthfully since I’ve been here. My body was like “WTF IS THIS SHIT!!?!?!!” when I gave it an insane amount of chocolate and sugar. It wasn’t so much used to that. My point is that I am taking it easy tonight and just relaxing.

Finally, congratulations Ben and Jess!!!! You two are an absolutely beautiful couple and I love you both dearly. I am SO excited for you!