10-17 Out and about in Brighton

Our hosts have a cleaning lady who comes on Tuesday mornings, so we decided to get out of the house and let her do her job uninterrupted by us. Since the temperature had dropped into the 40s, I bundled up and we walked the two plus kilometres to Preston Park and the lovely little café there called The Rotunda which is, as its name suggests, is round.

After breakfast we walked around the adjacent rose garden being tended by volunteers,

then passed a little building called “Whoopsadaisy Pavilion."

It’s an education center for children with cerebral palsy and similar motor disorders. Such a sweet name and such a worthy endeavor.

Preston Park is really enormous and we really only scratched the surface, so we’ll go back again I’m sure.

We crossed the street to walk around the Preston Park Rockery, which was lovely.

One of the games we like to play in England is spotting good signs. Sometimes they’re informative:

Sometimes they stretch credulity "We take our fun seriously":

Sometimes we like repurpose them.

Man making pizza ahead

Girl stepping on brother's foot ahead

Really tiny fish and chips

I never measure in yards

We loved this sign on the door of the pet store where we went in to buy drugs for the cat we’re sitting for (it’s okay, it was just catnip.)

Later that afternoon we headed into Brighton because I wanted to check out the North Laines, which is supposed to be a street of quaint shops specializing in antiques, antique jewelry, locally made goods and vintage clothing stores. It turned out to be mostly second hand clothes, not particularly old with a few other shops thrown in amongst the bars and cafés. I managed to kill time while Bruce did his pub crawl, and we met up at a tiny bar called the Twisted Lemon. The alleyway leading to the entrance was no more than 3 feet wide and there was virtually no signage out front. The only clue that it was there was the bright yellow paint on the door frame. And the entrance itself.

We spent 45 minute there before our reservation at Mowgli. Yep, another Mowgli. This one is the newest in the franchise and we shmoozed with Lauren, the hostess, bringing her greetings from the mother ship, as they call the original Mowgli in Liverpool. Our waiter was named Barry Smith and since our reservation was under “Smith Staelens” we spent a few minutes talking about all the perks and indignities of having that name. There’s one menu item that I order over and over, the Ruby Wrap, but I was determined to break the habit and order something new, I opted for the Bhel Puri. I’ve had it a couple of times before, but this version really rocked my world. Bruce isn’t usually a big fan of cereal-based food, but he loved it too. (I got stuck in before the photo. Sorry.)

Along with that we ordered the lamb chops with treacle fries, ginger chicken and a puri. The ginger chicken was good, but somewhat milder in flavor than is usually the case at Mowgli. The lamb was terrific, but the treacle fries were a disappointment. I guess I expected something, well “treacleier.” It was still a really good meal served in a beautiful setting.

We made our way through the little streets and alleys, a viciously cold wind blowing all the way, and found our way to the bus stop where, happily, the wait for the bus was short. Soon we were home again to our cozy house and our sweet kitty cat.