A day trip to Brighton...

So last week, taking advantage of the slightly unseasonally good weather, we decided to take a little trip down to Brighton to visit the Sea Life Center (traffic driving into town wasn't actually that bad, for once)...

...parking was still a bit of a pain (as usual) especially as the first ticket machine I managed to find was flashing "Out of Order"...

I did, eventually, find one, and we set off on our walk along Marine Drive -

- splashing in the puddles (when there was a convenient lack of speeding push bikes) -

- and enjoying a little toddle on the stony beach (to which Thomas, quite correctly, announced "Stones" Lots!") -

- (then proceeding to attempt to collect every single one that he could carry to bring with us) as we headed back towards the Pier...

Anyway, we decided we would do the Sea Life Center before going to get some lunch (slightly foolishly, as it would happen), we managed to pay, had our hands stamped (for free re-admittance) walked through the first door (Thomas getting very excited)-

- managed to take about 1 picture, and then all hell broke loose, an absolute coachload of French exchange students crashed through the door and started taking hundreds of pictures (with the flash set to auto, obviously) and all the fish promptly vanished into the corners of their enclosures in terror, thereby making the whole process slightly pointless...

So we went to the pub...

A short wait in the bar for a table later -

- we were sat down to a lovely steak (etc.) dinner -

- which Thomas seemed to approve of (sorry for the blurry pic, he was jiggling around too much with enthusiasm)... ;)

Anyway, when we thought enough time had past for the French people to be off in the distance we worked our way back down to entrance, stopping briefly to stand on the model of the Nautilus submarine -

- I had to close my eyes because Thomas was bashing with excitement -

- and then we were back in, and had the place pretty much to ourselves (about 3 other couples with small kids- hurrah!)...






- for a very enjoyable, quiet walk round, looking at the very many fish, touching the odd polyp (where allowed)-


- and enjoying the other sights, including the bent shark cage (oo-er) -

-and then we lugged the push chair up about 3 flights of stairs (grr)-

- to see the big pool (which used to be where they did the dolphin show (when this was the Old Brighton Aquarium - click that link for the 1972 guide book), if memory serves-

- it now has a glass bottomed boat ride (extra cash to do that though) and an underwater tunnel where Thomas correctly identified a "Shark!"...and that done, we decided to take a little walk along Brighton Pier-





- then finally, as Thomas was very tired from all this excitement, we headed back home... ;)