Brighton - Day 2 and Travelling home

What a difference a day makes! That's changeable English weather for you. As we sat at breakfast on Tuesday 26th October we looked out on to an angry day. Grey skies, a howling gale and horizontal rain. The sparkling blue English Channel had been replaced with a snarling, snapping foam. We thought this might happen so we had planned to do inside things today, the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Pier.
As we went outside, this was the Brighton that I remember. I had a sudden image of me walking the pavements to the shops with my Mum, eyes squinted against the sting of the rain, leaning into the wind, wrapped up in parker and hood. The air was wet and smelt salty. I wondered how much of the rain was falling from the sky and how much was blown from the waves. The wind whipped around the buildings where it could. People walking along quite happily with their umbrellas were suddenly ripped apart in a flurry of misshapen umbrellas, coats and skirts as they turned the corner into the seafront drive.
We found the entrance to the Royal Pavilion and were pleased to get inside. The Royal Pavilion was the Prince Regent's beachside palace. A grand building in a Taj Mahal-Arabic style with opulent Chinoise decorated rooms. A strange mix of multicultural design which screamed exotic. We'll have to get you to look up your own web-images of the inside of the Pavilion as you weren't allowed to take photos and all the images I could find are copyrighted. We were most impressed by the grand chandelier in the banquet hall. The roof fitting of the chandelier is held in the mouth of a dragon which soars above the dining table. We were also impressed by the 26000 gold shells that glistened in the dome above the music hall. It certainly is an extravagant building both inside and out. The history of the life of the Prince Regent (who took over from the mad King George III) was also very interesting. We listened to this and explanations of the architecture on audioguides we walked around with. Everywhere seems to have them now and they are a good idea, I think. The children chuckled along listening to their children's version so they had a good time with it all.
Next was lunch and it was time for fish and chips for me, Jack and Eleanor. Healthy Annie and still-full-from-breakfast Stef decided to have a salad and soup or some such instead. When I was a kid I used to have Huss and Chips on 'Friday night-Fish and Chip night'. Hadn't had Huss and Chips in 30 years. I ordered some as the sign on the wall said they had Huss and the Italian serving lady asked Bruno the cook for '1 X Rock and chips'. Rock? Must be an Italian thing, I thought. Unless she misunderstood me and I was actually going to get a rock with some chips. But no, a lovely Huss and Chips appeared. I looked on the menu and indeed, they call it Rock. Weird. Anyway, I got to have Huss and Chips in Brighton in one of the oldest fish and chip shops. Mission fulfilled. My Grandad used to run the oldest fish and chip shop in Brighton. It is no longer there so this fish and chip shop, stating that it is over 50 years in continuous business must be the next best thing. Right, after boring you with the fish and chip story, let's move on.
We were going to have a ride on Volks' Electric Railway. An old Victorian railway which takes people right along the seafront. Sadly, it was closed for the winter. So, we went on to Brighton Pier. It was about a third of the way along the pier that we realised we were walking on very old floorboards with angry waves churning away underneath. If you looked down you could see the water between the cracks in the boards. Yikes! Bravely we soldiered on. The pier is an amusement centre. There are a couple of halls of casino style/amusement arcade games. When I was a kid I remember there being antique Victorian amusements and penny arcade games. Now it is all flashing lights and nightclub music. We pushed on to the old Ghost Train.
They use a token system so as not to handle money on the pier. Getting the tokens was quite a business as the machine was outside in the howling gale and rain. It took coins so I had to change my notes for coins at one spot and then get the tokens one at a time at the machine. I had to juggle my handful of coins, get the tokens and not drop my wallet. "How many thousands of pounds do ya reckon are dropped down through the cracks into the sea?" I asked Jack. We thought there must be quite a bit of money under the pier.
Jack, Annie and Eleanor enjoyed the Ghost Train and then it was time to get back inside again. We thought we'd have a go at a bit of gambling, playing a game where you had to put the money into the machine in the hope that your coin would be the one that causes a cascade of 10p pieces and perhaps a massive gemstone or two to come tumbling down into our waiting cup. Eleanor had some success but then we lost it all. After learning our lesson about gambling we returned to the hotel for a nice cup of coffee and a bit of a relax before 5 star dining in the hotel for dinner.
Next day and it was time to travel home by train. The hotel sent their bill up to us and they had got it wrong so I pointed this out to them and they said they would fix it. Fix it they did! Giving us a better discount than the one they had already quoted due to the distress and inconvenience caused. I didn't tell them that I wasn't really that fussed about it, I knew what the problem was and I was confident of a quick resolution to the matter but anyway - Travelling with a family? Choose Hilton Hotels. The family friendly team!
We hopped on the train from Brighton to Victoria Station London. Nice train! Plenty of space and work area for me to do a bit more marking. We arrived at Victoria Station uneventfully and on time and we had about an hour to get to Paddington Station on the underground. That's when it all fell apart. There was a signal failure on the Circle line which was causing all sorts of problems on the tube. In hope, we decided to try some station and line hopping to see if we could get to Paddington another way. We somehow got to Earl's Court station which wasn't bad in itself but it became fairly obvious that we wern't going to make our 13:06 connection from Paddington. The 14:06 was available so we resigned ourselves to catching that. We eventually got on a train to Liskeard and the announcement came over the train speaker that tickets booked for a specific train (as ours were) held no value on this train and travellers would be charged full fare and a penalty. What? This was going to get really expensive. We sat and hoped that we would be forgiven as we had tried and the delay on the tube wasn't our fault. The ticket collector came round just after Reading. I think she knew that the tickets were wrong but took pity on our family and stamped them anyway. Grateful but a little rattled due to our tube experience and our predicament we settled back to try and enjoy our journey through to Liskeard. We arrived home at 17:50 only ten minutes later than we would have otherwise, quite strangely. An early night was had after a busy day.