Everything was beginning to feel like a novelty, having good spontaneous fun each week, weren’t we lucky. Jumping on the train we decided that Brighton was best visited without a car – parking was expensive and plus it was a good excuse to have a day off driving and enjoy a tipple or two with my beau. Puzzle books had become a tradition upon travelling and this time teamed with the last drop of Roger’s cider we were set for the day.
Walking a few metres from the train station in Brighton you hit the music venue and pub The Prince Albert, famous for its now ‘protected’ Banksy artwork on the outside wall. A great representation of the acceptance and open-minded gay culture associated with this little London.
It was great visiting these spots midweek and a pretty windy gloomy day made it quiet everywhere, we didn’t mind at all whilst hanging out with Wookie in the Star Wars themed garden. The winding paths of the lanes host some of the best shops in the city, including the famous Choccywoccydoodah cake shop which has it’s own TV series. The Brighton store is the original Choccy shop and feels tiny and a bit awkward in it’s elaborate and garish décor. The cakes are pretty spectacular though and so in the café we treated ourselves to a rich, but lush, lump of chocolate orange.
Booze and cake, so far we were doing well…
I had to show Hendrik the military shop too, I say shop, it’s far more like a museum. Hendrik commented that the shop housed more treasures than the entirety of the Wellington museum in NZ. Sadly we didn’t have a spare £10,000 laying around to purchase the samurai armour he so desired. 
Winding in and around the shops we made pit stops in quirky pubs and enjoyed a particularly nice mango gin. Hendrik managed to score a decent collection of vintage beer coasters to fulfil his collecting needs, there’s always something decent to come away with in Brighton.
We did the traditional wander around the pier which is fairly average really, the silhouette of the original burned out old pier on the horizon draws the attention more than the 2p machines. A wonderful Harry Potter shop (even if you’re not the biggest fan) a Thai meal, and whiskey later and we were ready to head home from this eclectic buzzy place.
London, the capital city was a must see on our itinerary, the tricky part was condensing it into a 3 day event. A few months prior on a cold wintery evening I booked 2 tickets to the Arcadia festival, or more commonly known as the giant flashing DJ spider famous for its stint at Glastonbury Festival. The spider was doing a dance event in London’s Queen Elizabeth Park this year celebrating its 20th year. This was the perfect chance to build a weekend of sightseeing around it.
Back on the train with excitement growing as landmarks like the shard began to come in to view – I could sense the excitement from Hendrik as he gazed out of the window. This would be a good opportunity to do a little tour guiding but also like every trip away, we were sure to include things that were a new experience for both of us. We’d booked a hop on-hop off bus thinking this would save our legs, but didn’t really need it. When we did actually catch one of the buses the architecture from top deck was pretty fantastic, but it didn’t offer much more for us to be honest – making our own way out and about on the tube was ideal. London is the ultimate for sights and sounds and extremes and on this beautifully sunny weekend we were in for an (exhausting) treat.
Starting at Trafalgar Square, we headed to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace, stopping at the New Zealand war memorial along the way. We decided long ago that we’d have a trip on the London Eye and the view was really decent on this clear day. Heading along the South Bank various festivities were happening and the buzz really was in the air. Buckingham Palace was pretty and Big Ben was, well, hidden in scaffold. We had to cram a couple of museums in didn’t we? A whistle stop tour of the Natural History Museum including the wonderful vaults full of precious gem goodness, we also managed to see the Egyptian delights in the British Museum which were high on Hendrik’s list. 
Unlike most of our trips food wasn’t our priority this time around (mainly due to monies) but a lovely wine and sarnie in Covent Garden was just what we needed, sitting beside two couples that were sharing bottles of champagne (who likes champagne really anyway?!). As if that wasn’t enough for one day we even managed to meet up with friend Beverley for a tipple! What an awesome day.
We stayed in a rather dodgy Air BnB (but hey we had more money to spend on goodies) and we were in East London’s Whitechapel, an area I hadn’t visited before. Brick Lane was nearby offering a host of treats including the BEST CHOCOLATE shop and a half decent hotdog stand, we played around trying on vintage clothing, thinking up occasions to sport the clothes.
The main draw for Arcadia other than being an awesome giant dancey laser beam spider, was that Leftfield were performing the best (it really is) dance album – Leftism. I’d introduced the album to Hendrik when he was still in Apiti and he was dead keen when I got tickets. It was also a chance to do a DJ dance gig which I haven’t done much of other than at festivals and of course Glastonbury itself.
After our stroll through Brick Lane we took the tube to the gig, greeting the awesome spider as we managed to sneak in hip flasks in our pants (it turned out to be a far longer walk to security than we had planned!) expensive boozing tokens bought, topped up with our spirits we settled in to the rhythm of the day. It was much too hot to do a great deal other than drink and laze in each other’s company until the thumping beats progressed, tempting us to dance. Everyone was on laughing gas rather than alcohol, wandering around like zombies with balloons hanging out of their mouths, the floor a wash with canisters and a distinctively putrid smell in these areas. We picked a decent spot and witnessing a spectacular feast of creepy human driven spiders crawling back and forth on the great spider, her eyes alight with laser beams and pyrotechnics galore, it was stunning. Leftfield offered up Leftism to an excitable crowd from the body of the spider, it was very surreal and a great escapism, we loved it.
Sunday chill day. I wanted to walk Tower Bridge and gaze over at the Tower of London, knowing full well there wouldn’t be time or energy left to go inside on this occasion. We lucked out witnessing Tower Bridge sounding it’s alarm to raise both arms allowing a sailboat to pass through. 
The remaining plan for the day was a treat meal at Shaka Zulu in Camden (a secret booking from me for that one). We sampled the tasty and curious African delights and most of all enjoyed the stunning restaurant décor. 
We were exhausted, desperately hot in a massively busy Camden, but what a fantastic few days we’d had – London done.
Soundtrack Leftfield – Leftism (album)
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