eastery weekend

it's Sunday morning and i've just painted my nails. Painstaking french tips which look all right from afar, but ridiculously amateur close up. so don't look too closely. in an effort to not bodge my creation, i've resigned myself to be infront of the netbook for the next hour, so what better time to blog about the easter weekend than now.

Easter fell on the weekend four days after my long sojourn to Australia. We didn't plan any grande trips away just in case i didn't return in time (work and visa dictated). When I did find out i would be back before the long weekend, it was probably too late to book anything overseas (or too expensive, either way!) so we chose to stay in England and do some local sight seeing.

On Friday we joined a day tour group and headed to Leeds Castle, followed by the very small town of Rochester.

Leeds Castle I loved. It was peaceful, well kept and unbelievably beautiful. Rochester on the other hand, i thought was the tiniest and most boring town I have ever ever been to.

We were only given about 2 hours to wander around Leeds Castle, which is just not enough time. The castle aside (which isn't massive and takes maybe 30 minutes to wander through), the grounds cover something like 500 acres, including beautiful waterways, a duckery filled with peacocks and other more interesting feathery things than just ducks, restaurants, a hedge maze, amazing flowers and sprawling green grass for one and all to laze and picnic on. My recommendation to anyone thinking about going is to allocate a whole day there, it really is worth it.



















After Leeds Castle we piled back onto the tour bus for a short ride to Rochester. Rochester is only famous for the fact that Charles Dickens lived there, and referred to several locations in the town in his various books. Our tour guide had said that Rochester is a very small town so don't worry, you won't get lost. Boy was he not joking about that. The high street of Rochester is, and I am not exaggerating at all, one street, spanning maybe four blocks. Along this street there are pubs. and second hand stores. and a candy store. I shit you not, this is the entirety of Rochester. Oh yeh there is a castle (as with almost every town in England) and a cathedral, but they too were just on the high street, within the four blocks. Yawn. So bored we were that we headed back to the meeting point almost an hour early and sipped on some bad coffee while we waited.....











On Saturday, Panu and I went renegade on our own and headed to Brighton - a beach town on the south coast of England. Pity the weather was dreary, because Brighton I also loved, and can see the amazing potential of this place on a warm sunny day.

Brighton was more than I expected it to be. It was buzzing with life, much larger than I thought it would be (especially after being to Rochester), and totally groovy. There's an area appropriately named The Lanes, which are intertwining little streets, some closed off to traffic. The shops are eclectic, the people even more so and the cafe culture is oozing from every pore. Reminded me too much of my beloved Newtown. We spent the night in Brighton, at a plush hotel known simply as The Grand. Loved every minute of it.





















The only thing I didn't get about Brighton? Pebbly beaches! You can't even walk properly on it.. how. do. you. sunbake?

As usual, the rest of the photos from the weekend can be found here.