It was quite the tight squeeze fitting our camping gear into the little BMW. Chris didn't think we had room for our camping chairs but I found a way (Chris just couldn't slam on the brakes or they might go flying and potentially
maim someone). We had to have the camp chairs along that we brought all this way!
Two minutes shy of reaching the campsite, Hailey puked all over herself and the car seat. Good thing we were almost there. Only, the poor girl and car seat had to make due with a wet wipe wipe-down. And I had to go wash her now blueberry stained clothes in the sink (luckily I had these mini travel laundry detergent slips). Not sure what brought that on because she seemed fine afterwards and the rest of the weekend and it was just that once. Maybe she was a bit car sick?
Chris got the tents set up while I dealt with the puke and then we got the kids in their jammies (ha, not like they were going to bed anytime soon) and he started the fire. Ethan was over the moon about having a campfire and sitting in his new alligator camp chair. Hailey kept falling over in her red camp chair on the uneven ground until we figured out how to lock it.
The kids are mesmerised by the fire and can't be bothered to look up at the camera. :)
Using our new headlamps (thanks Uncle Chris and Aunt Rachel)! Can you tell Ethan is excited to be camping and have a fire?
As usual when camping, the kids didn't actually go to sleep until after 10pm. And then they woke up a few times and I brought Hailey into our tent to share my sleeping bag at 4am. So we were pretty tired and my eyes were totally puffy (combination of allergies and lack of sleep) and my hip was killing me from sleeping weird and sliding down to the bottom of the tent and probably off of the mat. It was pretty cold during the night (in the 40s). When is summer going to hit England? And the kids were super cranky from lack of sleep. Are we having fun yet? :) Ha, we did have fun but honestly camping with small kids can sometimes feel more like punishment than vacation. :)
We ventured into "The Lanes" area of bohemian Brighton which is full of good restaurants and shopping and had Eggs Benedict at the Coast Cafe. Everything in Brighton is expensive! Parking was £20 for up to 9hrs (I don't remember what the up to 4hrs option cost but it wasn't much less).
Then we wandered around and walked through the Royal Pavillion, the gem of Brighton. Supposedly it was George IV's seaside retreat palace and is quite eccentricly decorated in a Chinese style. Unfortunately we couldn't tour the inside because it is closed on Sat. and Sun. (probably for events). Just walking around the grounds and checking out the Indian style exterior was pretty cool though.
Then we got espresso at an Italian coffee shop and couldn't pass up these little hazelnut (and others that had lemon filling) pastries:
Check out this cool coffee and concession (side note: I came to find out that "concessions" here also means young children and senior citizens when I was buying train tickets and you had to select the number of adults, children or concessions. I was a little confused by that and had to look it up.) stand made out of two old phone booths. What a great idea!
I love the buntings hanging everywhere on all the streets! They seem quite popular in England in general-I definitely want to buy or make one that has all different fabric prints for each flag. Brighton has a large gay population and a ton of hippies and has a cool bohemian vibe.
North Laine is full of cool boutique shops:
Ethan was happy when we finally made our way to the beach! It was pretty windy and a pebble beach (Bournemouth beach 30min. from where we live is a much nicer beach with sand) but it was fun to go on a few rides and sit and sift through and stack rocks.
Ethan was so excited to get to go on the carousel for his first time (he usually can't go because I have both kids and have to ride with him but Hailey can't go on it).
He really really wanted to ride with his sister. Hailey looks like she wants off this ride but Ethan is having a grand time!
The pebbly beach:
Ethan in the poppies by our campsite:
Ethan and Hailey were loving camping and getting to wander around the huge grassy open area and play with the other kids at the campsite. Ethan joined in on their cricket game even though he had no clue what was going on. There was this group of 3 or 4 families that were all camping together and this lady I befriended that invited Chris and I to join them for drinks around the fire after the kids went to bed. They had a Texan in their group too. But Chris was feeling antisocial and didn't want to abandon our little fire.
When we realized they didn't have the normal s'more fixings, we had to come up with an alternative: marshmallow fluff, Hobnob biscuits and Cadbury buttons. Pretty tasty, good enough! It turned out that they do have marshmallows after all (that are between the big and small size) but Chris didn't see them and didn't want to ask. We got them for next time though.
Night two Chris and I divided and conquered-Ethan and Chris in the boys tent and Hailey and I in the girls tent. They still didn't go to sleep for good until after 10pm but they slept in until 8am which was nice.
Here we are enjoying our beverages around the campfire:
Sunday we stopped at this cool park that had this really long slide and this cool treehouse with a climbing structure and huge thick rope you walk across (that totally rolls) which is a long way down if you fall. A really neat playground but the kind of thing that would be replaced with "safer" play equipment if it were in the US.
And we drove through this little medieval town Arundel (we looked it up and the town from Frozen is spelled Arendelle and is Norwegian-inspired). It was packed because it was nice out and was Medieval History Weekend so we didn't bother to get out except to stop at a cafe for some bad coffee.
They advertised for an upcoming Town Criers Competition in a few weeks which we had to look up:
http://www.arundelcastle.org/whats-on/events/town-criers-competition.html
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