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Saturday morning, we met up with Bernie at Victoria Station and boarded the National Rail for the hour-long southbound train ride to Brighton. 

Upon arrival, we decided to head down toward Brighton's star attraction: the beach.  Brighton has the feel of a small town, but it's got the hustle and bustle of someplace much bigger:

Moments later, we reached Brighton Beach

and found that, with its pier and pleasant shore, it resembles a British Santa Monica (except with a less crowded beach and pebbles instead of sand).  

The beach even begs you to litter,

but it discourages you from jumping from the groyne.

From here, we walked over to the pier.  En route, we got a good view of the town.

Like Santa Monica's pier, Brighton Pier has the look and feel of an amusement park

but with some distinct British idiosyncrasies

and perhaps not-so-British ones (I'm not sure how to classify the Disney duck getting up close and personal with the cat).

The view from the pier was nice

though we didn't have too long to enjoy it; at this point, it started to rain pretty heavily, so we made our way indoors.  We decided to check out a place with an ocean view: Terraces Bar and Grill, not far from Brighton Pier. 

I read somewhere that a requirement for any visit to Brighton was a meal of locally caught fish and chips, so I got that ("traditional fresh cod fillet deep-fried in crisp beer batter, garnished with citrus leaf salad and a heap of homemade tartare sauce served with fries") along with the potato wedges ("crisp and golden potato wedges served with a dressed salad garnish, gorged with melted cheese and your choice of either crisp bacon or red onion" -- it didn't taste as good as it sounds).  The cod fillet was easily the biggest deep-fried piece of fish I've seen in my life, and Bernie and I both found it to be pretty good. 

With Ishaan ogling the waitress, we made a quick exit and returned to the pier for some Belgian waffles.  By this point, we had been in town for a few hours, and the rain was coming down pretty hard, so we started making our way back to the train station.  Along the way, however, we ran into -- by complete accident -- the Brighton Museum:

After a quick brawl between Ishaan and Bernie,

we stopped inside the museum for a look at Brighton history.

The second floor of the museum featured an interesting (albeit random) exhibit on body image.

After perusing the museum for a bit, we made our way back outside and headed up to Brighton station.  After a short wait,

we boarded the train for London, and Bernie and Ishaan went to sleep.
 

After an hour on the train, we reached Victoria Station.  We wandered aimlessly for a bit, passing through St. James' Park, and headed in the direction of Covent Garden.  For dinner, we decided to pay another visit to Jindalle, the Korean place Ishaan and I had tried earlier in the week.  Along with the seafood tofu soup, I got a dish of spicy tofu -- all good stuff. 

Following dinner, we wandered through Chinatown

and hit up Ciao, an Italian dessert place.  While I rarely eat dessert, I figured vacation was as good a time as any to try what turned out to be an excellent Hazelnut cup -- a tall glass of hazelnut ice cream with hazelnut liqueur.  Delicious.

After a long day, it was time to call it a night. 

Last on the agenda: Oxford.

Map of Brighton