Since Cassie’s friend, Jamie, is
visiting from Boston we decided to not only show her around the wonderful city
that is Oxford, but also to go adventuring to some place in Europe during her
stay. The original plan was to go to Dublin where we would have had a free
place to stay curtsey of a friend of Jamie’s who was studying abroad there.
However, when we started to look into prices, mindlessly searching the internet
for cheap flights and came up with nothing under 221 pounds we begrudgingly had
to throw in the towel for the trip to Dublin. So on to the next plan which was
concocted when Cassie mentioned, “Hey, what about Edinburgh?” that sounded
great, until we came across the same dilemma as Dublin. Our confidence
shattered and the idea of just staying the weekend in Oxford with maybe a day
trip into London started to be planned I had the idea to flip through my book
of England and just see if any thing stood out. While mindlessly turning the
pages, not really expecting to find anything, I stopped on this photo of a
pier. I walked to book into Cassie’s room and said, “How about we go here?”
“Where is it?” I looked for a caption with the name Brighton. Cassie continued
to look at the photo for a few minutes then said, “Yeah, sure.” So we booked
the tickets and the hostel and just waited for Friday to come.
Friday morning was a bit hectic.
Our train was due to leave at 9:31 and we all agreed on leaving the flat at
8:20 to make sure we made it to the train station in time to print out our
tickets and allow a little extra time if something went wrong. Well, everything
seemed to go wrong. We didn’t end up leaving the flat till 8:30 and when we got
to the bus stop the U1 was still ten minutes out and when those ten minutes
passed and the bus still hadn’t arrived I began to fell slightly anxious.
We ended up getting to the station
at 9:15 and when we tried to print out our tickets it told us we needed the
conformation number. Lacking that important detail we didn’t quite know what to
do so we went up to the ticket counter and luckily the man was able to print
out our tickets after we showed him the credit card and a picture ID to go with
it. It was starting to seem like the rocky start to our morning was going to
disappear. I probably should have knocked on wood.
No train from Oxford goes straight
to Brighton so we had to get off and London Paddington and transfer to London
Bridge. So we got off the train, lugging our stuff around which on a whole
wasn’t that heavy but carrying it around awkwardly through a sea of people
suddenly made the bags feel like they were packed with bricks other than the
bare necessities.
Reading on the ticket that to get
to London Bridge we would have to take the tube. So we went up to one of the
men who worked at the station and asked for directions on how to get there. So
I misunderstood the guy, but in my defense my logic was pretty sound, you know,
for a misunderstanding. He gave us this map with a bunch of color coated lines
on it and said you take the brown one to the gray one and the gray one to the
station. Now, if I had grown up in New York or DC or somewhere with a metro I
probably would’ve recognized this map to be a metro map but no. I thought the
map corresponded to the train station so I was literally running around the
station look for a brown line to follow and getting more and more frustrated
when all I could find was a pink and green line on the floor. Finally Jamie and
Cassie, who did grow up around metros, looked at the map, saw it to be a subway
map, made fun of me for being flustered and we went and found the Tube.
Since we lost a considerable amount
of time with me wandering around and then having slight hiccups buying our
tickets for the Tube we ended up missing out train. By a hair too! We were
running and right as we got to the car doors they closed. Me about to just have
a complete meltdown, mentally trying to figure out how we were going to go
about getting our tickets changed and such Cassie and Jamie just shrugged and
said, “Well there is another one in 20 minutes we will just get on that one.”
We got to Brighton, asked the
travel assistance guide how to get to our Hostel in Hove and then proceeded to
get on the bus. When we got off the bus we realized that we had rode it about
six stops past where we were supposed to get off. So we got back on the bus and
rode it back. Luckily the stop was pretty close to our hostel, so getting to
the hostel wasn’t a problem. So, we had a brief break in the disappear of our trip.
When we got to the hostel and
walked over to the front desk where is blonde young looking, Swedish girl was
sitting. With a smile and since the booking was in my name and on my card I
walked up and asked if we could check in. Looking flustered the girl said, ”I
am sorry, I am just trying out, I don’t even work here.” Cassie, Jamie and I
all looked at each other and then Jamie said, “Well who does work here?”
because there was no one else in sight. The Swedish girl responded by saying
that the woman in charge had gone off somewhere about a half hour ago and she
had no idea where she went or when she was coming back. Getting more and more
annoyed but feeling bad for this poor girl who was just left here we stood
around waiting for the woman in charge to come back so we could check in.
Really all we wanted to do was put our stuff down, take a quick nap and refresh
slightly from our unreasonably hectic day. But no, the universe wasn’t going to
let us off that easily.
Finally, after a half hour of
waiting in this tiny cramped room the woman in charge came back only to tell us
that check in wasn’t till three. We all just kind of look at her, all holding
back our words of anger that we had been waiting in this room for half an hour,
half an hour that we could have gone to a coffee shop and sat and waited were
as now, since three was only 20 minutes away there wasn’t really anywhere that
we could go because the second that we would get there we would have to turn
around. I think the woman read the disgruntled customers on our faces and
offered to let us pay now, get the codes to the room and the building, and
leave our stuff in the office and just to come back at three. Slightly appeased
we ended up doing just that.
Since we were so close to the ocean
we decided to just go walk onto the beach and see the water. It was absolutely
beautiful and the crashing of the waves and just the serene atmosphere of the
ocean did wonders for all of our stress levels which had just been climbing and
climbing all day. At three we turned around and walked back to the hostel. When
we got in our room, which was comprised of two bunk beds we all just climbed up
and feel asleep for a good two hours.
Waking up we all felt refreshed,
happy, and slightly hungry. Now Hove reminded me of Headington slightly, not as
nice as the Oxford City Centre but still nice on a whole, more independently
own shops and restaurants. Having no plan as to what was actually in Hove we
walked up the main street until we came upon this Italian restaurant called
Otello. Each of us shrugging our shoulders we walked in and sat down. The food
was good, not the best Italian I have ever had, but it was more just nice to
have someone prepare a nice hot meal for me after a long day of late busses and
missing trains.
After we ate we decided it would be
fun to go into the main part of Brighton and explore what the city nightlife
down there had to offer. We ended up just form pub to pub more so to just
explore the interior than to get anything to drink. One of the pubs we went
into Jamie and I really had to use the bathroom, but I think it was meant to be
progressive or something because all of the bathrooms were meant to be both
male and female users and being more on the modest side neither me or Jamie had
any desire to watch a bunch of guys peeing at a urinal. Finally, we found a
bathroom tucked away so not a lot of people would notice it. When we walked in
there were two girls in there, clearly very drunk, waiting to use the bathroom.
After waiting there for a good five minutes Jamie finally said, “Are you sure
there is someone in there?” There wasn’t. The two girls started having a
laughing fit, used the restroom, struggled with turning on the sink and went
back out to drink more leaving Jamie and I with a funny story to tell at
parties.
Once we had our fill of the city we
went back to the hostel, roughly planned what we would do the next day and fell
asleep almost immediately.
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