As many of you may have seen from the drunken Tweeting, I was in Brighton two weeks ago, courtesy of a competition I won run by Living Social.
My prize was a romantic overnight stay in a hotel. Ummm. OK then. Not the greatest of timing but I thought I’d take my BFF instead. We can have a candlelit vodka and diet coke and a packet of Scampi Fries. (You think I’m kidding.)
I booked Friday off (always a winner,) and we drove down at lunchtime. I was co-pilot and considering we only had one near miss (when I told my friend to check out the guy in the car next to us eating yogurt as he drove,) I think I did rather well.
And when we saw this sign:
and knew we were nearly there.
Now, if you’re anything like me, before you’ve even checked in, the first thing you have to do when you’re on holiday, is have a holiday beer. It’s the law or something. So we found the nearest, cheesiest, stickiest carpeted place we could find and set down our catrillion bags and had the first beer of the day.
Sweet.
And then we had another.
And then I invited my travel writer friend Tracey, who’s a new Brighton resident, to accompany us for another.
And then I needed a wee.
And then I saw this:
And I felt equally very old but very immature at laughing at it like an eleven year old boy.
And so on. Bearing in mind, it’s only 2pm by now.
After regaling us with hilarious stories about drinking Pina(s) Coladas on press trips, Tracey had to leave to do the school run (not begrudgingly whatsoever,) and as appealing as the clientele was at 2pm on a Friday afternoon (ie. not very,) we made our way to our hotel.
The location of the Royal York Hotel was great. Right near the Pier (… and, more importantly, bars …) However, I had called the day before to ask about swapping to a twin room (I love my friend, but not that much,) and while I was on the phone they happened to mention that their kitchen had shut down for the weekend.
Not a good start.
Undeterred, we checked in and were upgraded to a business suite which basically consisted of … erm, well we couldn’t really see anything different. The view was nice though.
The plan was:
Unpack
Have a drink
Admittedly, a very brief plan.
We had been given some compensation by the hotel so that we could actually eat at some point over the weekend (bonus,) so we had a wander round The Lanes and came across a pub that our Tracey love had suggested – The Seven Stars, where we ate THE most awesome fish and chips. Lush.
Our stomachs suitably lined we made our way back to the hotel where the transformation began … from this:
to ….
