Slightly belated round up of our adventures during the Summer. Things kicked off with the Kids and E flying back to UK for the Summer holidays towards the end of June. I was able to go back with them as I was working in London the following week and we had chosen the day after the Brexit referendum to travel.
Because of flight timings, we were up with the lark on the Friday morning so were able to see the early voting returns and things were not looking terribly promising for the Remainers - and of course this was borne out by the time we landed in London when the majority in favour of Exit was confirmed shortly before touchdown.
Our trip to the UK also coincided with the Euro Football finals and England had already shown signs of things to come with a rather laboured draw in the first game.
We had flown into Gatwick and had decided to revisit old haunts down in Brighton at the weekend with the kids - staying at the Renaissance Hotel on the sea front. We had a great room with partial sea views and great views over the rooftops of Brighton town and the Pier.
After unpacking, We had lunch in Harry Ramsden's and spent the afternoon walking along the pier, sitting on the beach and eating ice creams - very pleasant indeed. After such a huge lunch we had an early night and were up bright and early for a great breakfast in the Hotel and then a quick mooch around the shops before meeting an old friend JG who had travelled down from his Mothers in East Grinstead and who worked at Sussex Downs College. It was good to see him again and we spend a very pleasant couple of hours having lunch at Café Rouge and then wandering the beach-front (including taking advantage of the photo opportunity afforded by the giant donut statue next to the pier....) followed by a visit to the Aquarium - a very well-renovated version of the 19th Century original.
JG and I then decamped to the pub in the evening to watch some of the football which was a real through back to times past when we regularly used to do that of a Saturday when he lived in London in the late 1980's (that makes me feel old simply writing it .....).
Sunday got off to a slower start as we did a bit more shopping and then met up with some old friends from HK days (K and W who will be recalled from my previous blog (http://taitamtales.blogspot.ae) and their son J. The kids were delighted to see J and we had a lovely meal with them at the Dome next to Brighton Pavilion (a restaurant E and I used to frequent back in the days when she lived in Brighton) and we then had a pleasant stroll with them down to the seafront (where a seagull nicked part of my doughnut - one of the fresh ones made before our very eyes on the pier which E and V took a real fancy to).
The sunshine of the Friday had been replaced by more changeable weather by the Monday but all in all it was a pleasant break which was only slightly disrupted by the challenges of getting up to London by train due to the problems with Southern Railways - tune in for the next instalment tomorrow!
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