A Hampshire and Sussex kind of weekend

Chichester (in the country of West Sussex)

Chichester Cross-in the middle of North, South, East, and West Lanes-they were very creative with their street naming

Chichester Cathedral

These little guys were strange...

West Lane

This type of flint architecture is native to the area!

Park in Chichester

The start of Brighton-In the Lanes which are narrow shopping streets lined with unique shops that make up what used to be the Old Town.

Found an antiquarian bookstore that had a Peter Pan in Kensignton Garden book that the owner had got in that morning dated from the 1920's. I finally got it! :)

Did I mention it was Gay Pride weekend in Brighton? We had just missed the parade.

The Royal Pavilion-started in 1787 as a seaside resdience for George, Prince of Wales

It's supposed to be beautiful inside, but it was kind of a hectic day to go inside!

Brighton had some great graffiti!

A building was painted with this design...

I wonder if this means the same thing in Brighton as it does in the bad parts of Houston?

Who could pass up an opportunity to try on this beautiful plastic hat? not us...

More of the Lanes...

On Thursday evening, I caught a train down to Petersfield so I could spend a weekend with Clair! The train was quite expensive, but definitely worth the good weekend. Clair worked on Friday, so I spent the day doing Spain research, cuddling with her two goregous cats, and going into town for a bit. Once I figured out how to make it out of her subdivision (or "Close" as it's called here), I found that I had no idea which way the town center was. So I waited for some kids to go by on their bikes, and followed them assuming they wouldn't ride away from town... Finally made it and found some nice little shops. It was a bit rainy, so I ducked into what else-but a second hand bookstore to wait out the rain!! I spent quite a bit of time in there (Clair told me her and her mom used to work there when I told her about it). Afterwards, I searched around town for just a bit longer, then headed back to Clair's house. When she got home, we finished preparing dinner and such for a small dinner party she was having that night with some of her closest friends.

Saturday, Clair had to work in Chichester for a few hours, so we left the house around 9, and she left me to wander around town while she was at work. I had been to Chichester last year when I was here, but only for about 30 minutes or so. This time, I got a nice look around. Again, I was threatened by rain, so after a few hours of walking around, I went back to sit in the car and read to wait for her. After she was let out at 1, we went on our way to Brighton. We didn't realize it, but one of Clair's friends had phoned the night before to see if Clair wanted to join her at the Gay Pride parade in Brighton on this day. So as it tuned out, it was Pride week there with the final day of festivites being Saturday. For this reason, we took the park and ride into town and mainly stayed in the Lanes to avoid the masses of people. It was a great colorful sight though! Exhausted, we headed home around 6 or so and had a movie night at Clair's.

Sunday was definitely a lazy day. We drove into Portsmouth to see a movie-Eclipse. We both loved the Twilight books and were excited to finally see this movie. At the movie theater (the Cinema as they call it here), the ticket seller asked if Clair wanted to upgrade our seats to v.i.p. and Clair said yes. The attendant then let her chose our assigned upgraded seats off of a screen and printed the seats off on the ticket. Turns out, that here, they have v.i.p. seating in most movie theaters which allows you to watch the movie in the middle of the theater in leather lounge chairs. It was great! The movie was so-so, but the seats were great! I caught the 5 o'clock train back to Waterloo station, the tube back to Clapham South, and was back at Bob's by 7. Another great weekend with Clair-Cat we wished you were there all weekend! We miss you!