Hey! In this post, I’ll be telling you the travel story of How I Took The Best Trip Ever. Don’t worry, I won’t be doing the obnoxious “capitalize the first letter of every word” thing all the way through. This story involves my dad, hours of driving in a car and meeting an online friend. Buckle up!
Disclaimer: the image quality in these pictures is pretty bad because I took them with my smartphone. Sorry about that.
First, some background information. Normally, my family and I go on holiday together every year. There’s not one specific place we return to every year, but we’re always together. 2016 was the year that changed. We decided to switch it up a bit: my dad and I went on a three-day trip to the south of England and my mom and sister went on a city trip to Barcelona. I was excited as hell, because I got to choose our destination, as long as it wasn’t too far away and we could do it in about 3 to 5 days. So, I originally chose Brighton. But then we quickly found out that there isn’t enough to do there to fill four days, so we made a road trip out of it.
DAY 1 – walking with sheep and meeting my friend
Lewes
On the first day, we woke up very early. It was around 5 am when my dad came into my room to wake me up. We had to wake up this early, because we were supposed to catch a boat trip and we still had a two-hour drive to go until we got to Calais, where the boat was waiting for us. Once we arrived in England, we disembarked in Dover and drove to Lewes. After driving around to find a parking spot, we walked through the town center. We found out that there was some sort of food market going on and we decided to go have a look. This was what we found.
The entrance of the food market, already looking cozy as all hell.
One of the food stalls, selling all kinds of organic and vegan foods (I think).
After having discovered this little gem, we strolled on. In the city centre, we found some large store chains and a lot of little quirky shops. And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. These were on every corner and they all looked the same. I wanted to go inside every time, but my dad didn’t. Sad.
I’m only adding one picture because frankly, all the quirky shops looked like this.
We found that there wasn’t really much else to do in Lewes, so we went to a tourism bureau and asked for recommendations. The wonderful lady there pointed us in the direction of the Seven Sisters, a formation of chalk cliffs with a nature reserve attached to it. So, we headed up there and had lunch before embarking upon what would turn out to be a two-hour walk in between the cliffs, a field of goats and a golf terrain.
Our assorted lunchbox, coming from the aforementioned food stall.
Not too bad for a lunch view, if I do say so myself.
Brighton
After having lunch atop this hill next to the actual cliffs, we started walking through the beautiful hills and such. After seeing the cliffs and scaring my dad by pretending to jump off them, we must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. We discovered that somehow, our only option was to go all the way around a huge field where sheep were grazing peacefully in order to get back to the car. Eventually, we made it back and we drove to Brighton. For me, this was the absolute highlight of our trip.
Our view as we were driving into Brighton.
Right now, it’s about 2 pm, which means we have a whole afternoon to discover the beauty of the city I had been dreaming of for months. The first thing we did was check in to our hostel. My dad had found a beautiful little hostel right in the city centre. After everything there had been taken care of and we had dropped our luggage in our room, we headed out. The one thing I wanted to see the most was the Brighton Pier. It was just as I had imagined: playful, huge and gorgeous.
What the entrance of the Brighton Pier looks like.
We walked around the Pier for a while and went inside to the casino part after that. That was pretty magical as well. The atmosphere inside was so different from outside though. On the pier, people were sunbathing and enjoying the company of strangers, while inside, it seemed like there were only money-hungry gamblers.
This is what the inside looked like. A couple of seconds after taking this picture, my dad pointed out that we weren’t actually allowed to take pictures inside. Oops.
More Brighton
The next thing we did was check out the famous, peculiar shopping district, The Lanes. I really loved spending time here for some reason. Maybe it was the spirit of generosity and animosity, maybe it was all the cool shops. Maybe it was a little bit of both.
A little extract of what the Lanes look like.
For some reason, this jeweller’s shop reminded me of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter.
We hung out around the Lanes for what was left of the afternoon. We then got back to the hostel and prepared ourselves to go out for dinner. When we were sitting at the dinner table and my dad was making some small talk with the people on the table next to ours, I remembered my friend Ryan lived near Brighton. I had gotten to know him online and during the past year or so, we had been joking about meeting each other.
Even more Brighton
I figured out that was finally an actual possibility, so I asked my dad if he’d be okay with me abandoning him to meet up with my friend and he said he would be. So, I sent Ryan a message asking to come to Brighton and hang out, and he did. He took a train, and I waited for him at the station (luckily, the restaurant we were eating at was right next to the train station).
Ryan and I obviously had a little chat about how great it was to finally meet in real life before heading to town. When we were about to enter a pub, I noticed I had left my wallet (which had my ID) at the hostel, because I figured I wouldn’t need it anyway (at the time we left the hostel, I had no idea I would meet up with Ryan). As I didn’t have any proper identification, none of the bars would allow us to go in. At this point in time, we decided to go back to the hostel and go get my ID. About half an hour later, I emerged from the hostel, wallet proudly in the hand. We hit a pub near the hostel, had some pints and played some pool. It was honestly a great night.
This is Ryan (left) and me (right) after hanging out at the pub, both looking like we smoked about twelve joints each. I swear we didn’t.
After this great adventure, I headed back to the hostel room, where my dad was waiting for me to tell the whole, amazing story. We fell asleep watching some football game on television.
DAY 2 – malls, battle sites and live pub music
Eastbourne
The second day, we woke up around 8:30 am. We decided to grab one of those delicious, full English breakfasts in some kind of breakfast bar we had spotted the day before. Soon afterwards, we returned to the hostel, packed our bags again and headed out to Eastbourne. After finding a parking spot just outside the city centre, we walked around for a while. We quickly discovered that there wasn’t too much to do here, so we decided to check out the mall.
Following the trend of the rest of the city, the mall was nothing special. We had seen everything inside in about 10 minutes, if it even took us that long. It was less glamorous than I had hoped it would be.
Hastings & Battle
After wasting a full morning in a town we could have gone through in about fifteen minutes, we made our way to Hastings. Yes, it’s the same Hastings where the battle took place in 1066. One adjacent town, Battle, reminds the inhabitants of Hastings of that every day. The main part of Battle was a big historical reserve dedicated to exactly that battle. One of the best things we encountered in between the ruins of some old castle was what I assumed to be an actor playing a soldier from the 11th century who was play-fighting a kid who had brought a sword with him. It was so cute.
I absolutely loved spending time in this gem of a castle (ish), but my dad wasn’t too keen on it, so we moved on. After all, he’s still my dad and the person who drove the car, so I didn’t really have a choice but to follow.
Old Town Hastings
After another short car drive, we arrived at our sleeping accommodation for the second night. We were sleeping above a pub that had about 6 visitor rooms. After unpacking and refreshing a little bit, we went out and discovered the old town centre of Hastings. We discovered that the main part of Old Town Hastings was a recreation of the fisherman’s neighbourhood, which was conveniently right near the harbour. We visited a small fishing museum and found another couple of quirky shopping streets like the Lanes in Brighton. Here, I bought a cool, vintage-looking poster.
We explored the old part of Hastings all morning and afternoon, and eventually we found ourselves at night in the pub. We played chess, drank beers and listened to the live music. It was pretty great. When the music was over and people were leaving the pub, we decided to go have dinner. We ate fish and chips in a cozy little restaurant nearby. Honestly, there wasn’t much else to this night. After having dinner, we went back to the pub and went to sleep.
DAY 3 – boat trips, old buildings and home
Canterbury
The next morning, right after having breakfast, we got going again, this time with Canterbury as our destination. I was very excited about this, even though the thought of going to Canterbury hadn’t even occurred to us before we left from Belgium. My family and I had gone to Canterbury once before, and I loved it then, so I figured I would love it again now. I was right.
In the morning, we walked around the city admiring the atmosphere and architecture. Canterbury is filled with houses that look like they’re still standing from centuries ago (and some of them probably are).
I somehow really liked how these buildings looked. Anyway, we soon found out that we didn’t have that much time left so we went and got lunch at some Asian place. Afterwards, we decided to go on one of those boat trips that take you through all the city’s tracts with a funny tour guide. I’m glad we did that, because our guide was hilarious and I actually learned a lot as well.
What you can see on the photo above is a low bridge our boat had to go under. The guide, who normally was supposed to stand up while paddling, was forced to go low as well. Anyway, the thread-like structures on the archway are actually spider webs. The guide told us about this, but only when we were about halfway through. This led to a lot of people panicking and screaming. It was pretty funny.
The funny part about these webs is that the city of Canterbury is not legally allowed to get rid of them. They belong to some sort of protected spider species and if they clean up their webs, their entire species would be in danger of extinction.
Going back home
That was pretty much the most exciting part of our trip. After the boat tour, we had to go back to Dover in order to make it to the boat on time. Congratulations to you in case you made it through this entire post. I realise it’s quite a long story and it might be a hassle to read it all. But honestly, there wasn’t anything I could have left out.
During this trip, I had the time of my life. I’d do it all over again any day of the week. However, this is where I leave you. If you like this type of posts, let me know and I’ll make more of them.
Thanks for reading this long travel story!
-S
