VIDEO / London Winter 15/16
Video from my trip to London back in mid January.
Video from my trip to London back in mid January.
Picking up from after grabbing some breakfast, we head towards the pebbly beach and its frigid waters.
A little Cappuccino would probably be perfect for puttin' around town during the busier summer.
Michelle is patiently waiting for a subject to shoot...
...and here he arrives! No close ups though.
And that's pretty much it. As I mentioned earlier though, most of the still images I took were using my film cameras so look forward for more footage from those rolls in the near future.
Picking up where we left off, once we finished watching the sunset, we wanted to get out of the freezing wind and head into town to look for a place to grab dinner.
Everywhere you look you can see that everything in UK has been around for a long, long time. What us Americans think is old (100 or so years) is nothing compared to Europeans who can boast about centuries worth of buildings and landmarks.
Old churches everywhere you look.
Wonder if it has any connection to the MM on Fairfax...
As the sun started setting more, the sky started giving off a very distinct purple light. I'm used to orange/pink and reds (deserts and forest fires) but the only time I remember seeing such purple lighting was in Washington. A northern thing?
The Brighton Royal Pavilion again.
Now you can really see the purple I'm talking about. Very pretty though, especially on white buildings.
Found a Japanese place that had a good Yelp rating, but honestly we were a bit disappointed with the food. Still doesn't compare to our local go-to cheap Japanese spot located in Chinatown (of course).
And so concludes our trip to Brighton. Overall we enjoyed ourselves and I personally like it a lot more than London which at this point is starting to just feel like it's nothing more than one big shopping district. I've been lazy with putting up our trips so I'm on a roll with updating this blog with a backlog of our whereabouts. Look out for more tomorrow!
Now to the pier!
Actually was a pretty nice little pier. I'm sure it gets hectic in the summer, but it seems nicer & more charming than the Santa Monica/Cruz/Barbara piers.
Yeah, no worries mate. I'm in no rush to get in those waters!
Did I mention the lighting was really nice? Yeah, this was around 12-1pm which normally at home would be pretty harsh but here it's clean and smooooooth. #photogeek
Here's something we weren't expecting! I've long wanted to Jet-Ski off ocean waves, but Seadoos work too! Definitely need those wetsuits though!
Was tempting to ride the bumper cars, but there weren't enough people that'd make it fun. You gotta have a mass of people all out to kill each other, that's when it gets fun!
Anyone wanna hop on?
Here's Michelle with her trademark kitty impression.
Because Native Americans?
Ah, I miss the ocean. The final part coming up shortly!
And so the exploring begins. But first, breakfast!
Yummy yummy! Poached Eggs with Salmon and full English Breakfast, also with Poached Eggs (not generous amounts of sour cream as I frighteningly thought for a second). You can find good food in any major city nowadays, but you gotta go out of your way to find someplace in UK that doesn't have a good breakfast.
Not really a fan of DC products, but you gotta admit they have a solid brand image.
The Brighton Royal Pavilion, definitely stands out thanks to its Eastern style architecture. Apparently build for one of the Edwards, this is actually a Royal landmark and has no religious purposes at all. Weird, but neat.
Pretty cool military themed beach cruiser my Carhartt. Oddly, despite being an American brand, all of their cool stuff is available only in Europe and Japan. I understand brands offering JDM exclusive products, but come on, if France and UK are buying it, so will LA and NY.
Finally getting to the coast. Gotta love that clean fresh Northern sunlight! Makes for very "pure" looking lighting, not as warm toned as it is in warmer regions.
Oh what have we here? The Brits sure love their ferris wheels.
Looks pretty neat with such a flat environment though. I grew up seeing the Santa Monica ferris wheel so a ferris wheel next to the ocean isn't anything new to me, but I find something about this one so appealing. I think it's isolation from the Brighton pier and other attractions/buildings makes it seem like it's on the edge of the world.
Skimboarding anyone?
#selfie
First time encountering the Atlantic. Wasn't as cold as I thought it'd be though.
More coming up in a bit!
A free weekend! FInally, we were actually going to step out of our 5 mile circle and explore outside of London to Brighton. Getting out there with such short daylight (about a mere 6 hours worth nowadays) requires an early morning leave however, so around 7 AM we headed out of our apartment to get on the bus that'll take us to the train that'll bring us to Brighton. Yeah, not as easy as the States.
At least we lucked out with the weather. It was said to be really cloudy but when we awoke there was hardly a cloud in the sky.
If anyone wants to visit us, just look for our local bus stop, haha.
It's so strange how music is gets popular/released a different times depending on location. This was just put up the day before. Even Awolnation is just now getting posters for their album and is really popular right now, seems like they've been around for a long time already though.
One of the latest skyscrapers introduced to London, the Shard. Very impressive looking building, though it's pyramid-like shape makes it look taller than what it really is.
London Bridges looking really good since being rebuilt. Ya know, since it keeps falling down...
A bunch of people staring at the time board is a very common site around here.
I wonder why West Coast hasn't adopted the train as well as East Coast or Europe/Asia. Seems pretty practical IMO.
A pretty good visual summary of modern-day London.
Honestly though, the train ride out wasn't too interesting to watch. I was hoping for more countryside but instead got mostly towns/suburbs.
So this is a beach town... Yeah, we're not in Cali anymore.
Huh, I could have sworn his name was different...
Another badass Defender. I'd take a 110 over a G Wagon any day really.
Part 2 to be posted soon.