Yesterday Sally and I went to Brighton for the day. This adorable seaside town was the perfect way to start my weekend.

Brighton was only a 40 minute train ride away and we got there nice and early, around 9:30am. We walked down towards the beach but quickly got sidetracked by a mall. There aren't shopping malls in England, not like the ones back home, so when we saw this one we had to go inside, plus it was so cold outside we needed to be in the heat.

I got a cute top from H&M and once again we were on our way to find the beach.

Most of the shops on and around the pier didn't open until 11:00 so we just walked along the beach (its made up of pebbles, not sand) taking pictures of all of the seagulls and the beautiful clear water. Once the pier opened Sally and I got some cotton-candy to much on while we tried to find a place for lunch. Most of the restaurants and pubs around here don't start serving food until noon, but we were welcome to sit in the bar and wait, and that's just what we did.

After lunch we wandered up to the Brighton Pavilion, a royal house built by King George IV. The entire thing was built in an Asian and Indian theme and the interior decorations were completely different from any of the other building I've seen yet. It was beautiful and fun to visit, but the best part of the entire thing was the fact that we were able to get inside and out of the cold.

We decided to walk down to the marina, which was entirely across the town. It took us a good 35-40 minutes to walk there, and at first all I did was complain about being cold, but we quickly warmed up a bit and enjoyed the leisurely stroll along the beach. Down by the marina there is a bowling alley, cinema (movie theatre), restaurants, shopping, and obviously, the marina. The shopping was nothing special and most of the stores were closed actually. Once we stopped walking we were both so cold and had a lot of time to kill so we decided to go see a movie, if only to stay out of the cold.

It turned out that the only show we could catch was the new Matt Damon movie 'The Green Zone.' I didn't know what it was about but I love Matt Damon, so we decided that we should give it a go. The movie, while entertaining and suspenseful, was defiantly not something I would have chosen to see had I known what it was about. Basically, it's about a soldier, Matt Damon, who is in charge of finding WMD's in Iraq during the beginning of the war in 2003. Damon's character quickly becomes questioning of where the intelligence of these WMDs is coming from, and from there the movie moves on the criticize the Bush administration's reasoning for entering into the war, in not so many words. Like I said, the movie was entertaining and a good way to stay out of the cold, but it was a bit too much for me to watch and try to completely ignore the lies put forth by the screenplay writers.

The film ended around 7:00 so Sally and I decided to stick around the marina and grab some dinner. Afterwords we hopped in a taxi and went our separate ways, Sally back to the pier and me to the train station to grab a magazine and wait for the train, which didn't leave for another hour and a half. I basically froze to death waiting, and when we were finally able to get aboard the train at around 9:30pm I wanted nothing more than to be home in my warm bed. We got back into London around 10:40 and got back to Nido a little after 11. It had been such a fun-filled busy day that I went straight to bed and slept soundly until noon today.

London doesn't participate in Day Light Savings Time, so luckily I didn't loose any hours of sleep :]] I only have class on Monday this week because for my other classes I have a "reading week." Basically its a day off from class that allows students to catch up on any homework, yeah right. I plan on sightseeing and enjoying the supposedly warmer temperatures (it should be in the low 50s this week!)

-audrey