Day two in Brighton and we were ready for a cooked breakfast. This is one of the things I'd been looking forward to most, there's a place (that we now know is called Kensington's) that I've had a full vegan breakfast before, builders tea with soya milk, the works. And they do meat breakfasts too, so Clare could get what she wants, and it's very close to the hotel. So everyone's a winner! Except they open really really late... so we were raring to go, but the cafe wasn't. We wandered around a bit but found most places start a bit later than we did. Kensington's wasn't even open at the advertised time of 10am, so we went somewhere else on the same street that also did the same sort of deal, cooked breakfast for both of us, so we were happy. There are SO MANY vegan friendly places in Brighton it's untrue.
Next we headed down to the pier to check out the Gay Pride parade, see all the floats starting up and take a few pictures. I think this was next anyway. Not so many google plus checkins today, I think I was trying to kick the habit a bit, and also not advertise exactly how far away from our house we were in case the google plus is loaded with burglars. Anyway, it was busy along the parade route, but though not unbearably so. Bit slow starting though, so we left soon after the start for a walk on the pier. We had a lively discussion about the location of a dolphin derby game that we'd played on another visit years before. Clare thought it was here, I thought it was there, we were finding archeological evidence to support our claims, look see here where the seats definitely were" etc. Then we found the dolpin derby, still on the pier, not where either of us remembered it. Maybe they moved it. Anyway the pier was mostly deserted because of the parade, so we had a go. With no other riders in the race we were unfortunately in with a 100% chance of winning a stuffed toy. Clare beat me by a nose, and we took home a stuffed dolphin for our efforts.
We headed through the town, more window shopping and stopped for a drink at Pub du Vin. This was on my list of places definitely to visit this weekend, it's a designer pub from the people who brought you Hotel du Vin. A nice place, like the ideal of a pub but seriously cleaned up so your Mum would like it. Worth a look in but not the best place we went to over the weekend.
For lunch we went to Street Thai in Brighton Square. The site used to be home to a Mexican restaurant which we'd been to a few times, one of only about two places I remember us revisiting. The food was great, pretty spicy, and the service was fast and eating out on the roof terrace added to the holiday vibe. Not expensive either, a good lunch.
I think Clare shopped a bit at this point on her own and left me reading my book again, in a Wetherspoons this time. I like Wetherspoons, me and my chains again.
The best place we went to over the weekend was The Evening Star, the best pub anyway. This is the first tied pub of the excellent Dark Star brewery, and is small and quite dark and on a less than salubrious street right near the station. Great range of beers and - unless I was projecting my own enthusiasm - had a nice atmosphere too. It was due to close for refurbishment at the close of play that day, but I'm sure it will have opened again by now and be equally ace. But with nicer toilets. Clare left me here to enjoy another pint while she headed back to the hotel to get ready for the evening.
On the way out we stopped in Ten Green Bottles on the same street as the hotel, a combo of wine shop, wine bar, and tasting room. There was a fairly intimidating range of wines on offer, though only old world as far as I could see. Instead of investing in a whole bottle (and paying a fiver corkage) we went for the two best wines by the glass. I tried to remember them using the phone but the spell checker made it "chateau moulin de tricot hair medical 2007 claret and 'sine nominees'" so I can't really be sure what we had. Both Bordeaux I think and both OK. I wanted to like this place more than I actually did.
If not actually next, then very soon after we went to Hotel du Vin, which was great. Their wine by the glass was seriously good though again I can't remember exactly what we had. Clare had something Argentinian and I had a Riesling, both brilliant. Really nice environment too, we enjoyed one of these on last year's anniversary trip to Winchester, and this was of the same standard.
We toyed with going back to Street Thai for dinner as it was so good but went for Zafferelli instead, an Italian in Brighton's equivalent of Leicester Square (again, very close to our hotel), which was lovely. Busy place, lots of people getting free drinks by the looks of it, I think because they had their orders go wrong. Ours ran smoothly so no free drinks for us.
Don't think we went to another pub after this but we did sit in the park and watch the revellers go by.
Paul Clarke's blog - I live in A small town, Kent. Wed to Clare + father to 2, I am a full-stack web engineer, + I do javascript / nodejs, some ruby, python, php ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home automation + other diy stuff, history, family tree stuff, TV, squirrels, pirates, lego, + TIME TRAVEL.