Holborn and Brighton! (To Brighton Your Day!!!!)

For one of our required classes, British Experience Seminar, we get assignments to visit different places in London.  So yesterday for this week's assignment, I visited a place in London called Holborn.

Its really crazy how places that are really close together in Central London can be so different from each other.  Holborn isn't very far from Leicester Square and Charing Cross, but it is so much quieter than either of those places.  And the first thing that we visited was a quiet little park, called Lincoln's Inn Park.  It was filled with blooming trees, people walking their dogs, and...construction workers.  But it was still really cute.

The entrance to Lincoln's Inn Park

Bloomin' Trees!

And right next door is the former home of Sir John Soane, who was a famous British architect.  His most famous design was the Bank of England in 1788.  But his home is now the sight of the Sir John Soane's Museum.  The museum is really unique and also really eccentric.  It was free to go into, so we did.  And every nook and cranny of this house is filled with 'stuff'.  Most of this 'stuff' were pieces of Egyptian architecture and sculptures.  They were just hung on every wall and available surface.  There was even a full size Egyptian sarcophagus!!!!!!

The entrance to the Sir John Soane's Museum

It was weird.  And if this was actually how Soane had decorated his home, he would have been an interesting person to meet.  I wonder how easy it was to navigate a home like that?  I guess its not exactly how I would choose to decorate a house, but to each his own...

After we finished at the museum, we moved on to a courtyard in the middle of some of the law offices in the area.  It was a really pretty area, with a fountain in the center and buildings on all sides of it.  There was also a large church and tons of flowers and plants.  I really enjoy all the wildlife.  I wish it was like this in Iowa at this time of year!

Sights in the courtyard...

The last place we visited in Holborn was the Temple Church.  This church was built in the 12th century for the Knight's Templar.  It was a beautiful, round building, which was interesting for a church, and it is apparently well known for having very good music at its services.  It was a fun little day trip into Holborn!

Temple Church

Then today, we went as a group to Brighton, which is right on the Southern end of England and also on the water.  We got there around noon, and unfortunately it was both cloudy and windy.  Boo.  For the past few weekends the weather has been really nice, so we were really hoping that it was going to be nice for us, but it definitely wasn't swimming weather.

Initially, as a group we toured the Royal Pavilion, which was the home of King George IV.  The interior of the house was really different, especially for the time period.  In the giant banquet room, the chandelier was decorated with dragons and there was a large one on the ceiling.  It was crazy, and it also made me wonder why someone would want to decorate a house like this...Of course, there were the typical elegant sitting rooms, and music rooms, as well.  But we've seen this before, so we quickly toured the house and made our way to the beach!

One of the entrances to the Royal Pavilion

The beach was very pretty, but it was the pier that I liked the best.  It was really large.  It had to be because there are several restaurants, shops and park rides on the pier.  We spent about an hour or so just walking up and down on it, and then we ate lunch (noodles!!!) on it too.  Once we got our fill of the pier we walked down to the beach, which was obviously only a few steps from it.

The Pier!!!!

And the beach!!!

The beach is very different from any other beach I've been on.  First of all there is no sand.  The beach is entirely made of rocks and pebbles.  Which doesn't exactly make it a comfortable walk down to the water, which was freezing by the way.  We still walked in it, but when the big waves came in, it was a little cold on my toes...and we also sunk into the rocks, which made it hard to escape.  But we laid out on the rocks for awhile, and luckily it started to warm up.

For awhile, we shopped around and looked at the little shops around the town.  But afterwards we headed back to the pier, and by this time it had warmed up considerably.  The sun was out and it was decently warm.  So we took some of the free deck chairs and just sat on the deck.  And we stayed here for about an hour, soaking up the sun.  It was so niiiiicccceee....we didn't do that much in Brighton, but it was still a nice day anyway, especially since I am getting worn out from all the traveling.  I love it, but it is so tiring!!!!

Spring Break is coming up!!!!