Brighton Rocks

Today we spent the day in Brighton.  Upon arriving at our amazing hotel we went down to the beach to see what the town has to offer.

We went to the Brighton Pier...

...which suspiciously looks and smells like the Jersey Shore.  (Not the TV one, the real one: Wildwood.  Anyone who tells you some other shore is better can suck it.)

The major difference between Wildwood (known locally in England as Wildwoowd... you know, because with double O's comes a Double-U... Queen’s English and all…) is that the beach is not actually made up of sand...

...but of rocks!  I thought "Yay!  Finally a beach I can frolic on without getting sand in my shoue!"

 Of course, those rocks had plans of their own. . .

 Perhaps I need new shoes...

And although the rocks do share some of sand's behavior, not all of its properties were carried over to the rocks.  For example...

...no matter how hard you try...

...you just can't build a sand castle out of rocks...

Worst.  Sand Castle.  Ever. 

And for the record, it also really, really hurts when your friends bury you here.

You can’t tell, but they tried to give me boobs and a mermaid tail. I hate my friends.

Once I managed to dislodge the rocks from my clothes, face and (again) shoes...

Seriously...

…we wandered into this old time Penny Arcade!

All of the machines in the place still work using the old school pennies that were in place before Europe converted to the Metric Europound® system. The games were simple… many just using silver marbles to shoot up into the hole. . .

That's what she saud. 

…and some were clearly not for children, like this naughty machine which has you put a penny and crank the knob (so to speak) in order to see a series of black and white photos that, when rotated fast enough create a little mini porn.

In this case, a flapper lady was hiking her skirt up while some chap played a bongo in the background.  I'm sure this was quite racy back in the day, but it left me quite unsatisfied.

Moving on:  There was also a hockey game (which I believe is called StickBaull here). It looks fun…

…but it did not work.

This game, however, did.

You shoot at the dead people in the coffins, and then they fall backwards and rise up again. I’m pretty sure this is what 28 Days Later was based on….which, for the recourd, was released here in Europe under its metric title, 3 Hectares After.

The most, uhhh, “precious” moment was when we found this Jazz Band in the back of the museum. It’s a four piece band…

... in what seems to be black face. And for 20p (approximately 50 cents, or .03 million billograms) they will sing and dance for you. And sometimes, their eyeballs move.

It was actually pretty terrifying. I might go back and hide beneath those rocks.