Trivia Night & Brighton Beach

After hearing about how much fun Trivia Night was last week for some of our coworkers, we decided to give it a shot. We all met there around 7 for dinner before the trivia, which ended up starting at 9. Luckily five of us managed to stick around for the fun and we were known as "The team of Americans in the bay window" since everyone else was a regular. Rounds 1 and 2 consisted of 10 questions each, mostly with questions about British pop culture. We held our own since we did have a British expat with us. After a brief intermission, sheets were passed out with 40 snapshots of movie scenes where all of the people in the pictures were made invisible, but the clothes still remained. Examples of the movies selected were "Beetlejuice", "Bend it Like Beckham", "Cool Runnings", and "Uncle Buck". Luckily, our eclectic team had seen a good range of movies and we ended up tieing this round with a score of 33 out of 40! The tie breaker for the round was to guess the year that Baby Jessica got stuck in the well. Our guess ended up being closer than the other team's, so we actually ended up winning the round and a bottle of wine. Rounds 4-7 consisted of 5 questions each, with the last being questions about Baseball (the team of coworkers who went last week came in last place, so they got to pick a topic for this week). Most of rounds 4-6 were more questions about British culture, so we maybe got 3 or 4 of them right, but we dominated the Baseball round. At the beginning of these rounds, we were asked to make one of the rounds our "joker" round, which meant double points. SO we picked the baseball round. It was made up of questions mostly about the movie Field of Dreams (where did it take place?, who played Shoeless Joe Jackson?, etc...). I guess they did that because they didn't know too much about the game and none of the Brits woulkd have gotten any of the questions, so they attempted to make it easier. One of the questions was, where was the movie based? The teams paper we graded said Arizona! After it was all over, we ended up coming in 3rd place (out of 5) and won 5 pounds, which we donated to charity.

On Saturday, we ended up driving south to the beach town of Brighton. We took back roads in the morning and it took around an hour and a half to get there, and another half hour to find a parking place somewhere close to town. We walked around town for a while and went down the Brighton pier where they had carnival rides, food, and games. Once we got hungry for lunch, we walked around for a little while and found a small Italian restaurant called "FatLeo". We both had the steamed mussels for an appetizer and a pasta dish for our main course. The food was great! We left stuffed and went for a long walk to check out all of the small shops. Brighton is a very eclectic place with lots of shops and we saw most of it. Very cute little town...of the main beach road.

We also got to see the Royal Pavilion, an over-the-top mansion that King George built in the early 19th century. The decor in this house was crazy! The dining room had a 40 foot chandiler that weighed over a ton and was clutched in the claws of a large wooden dragon. There was also the music room that was covered in gold including some thousand something gilded shells covering the whole dome. We were not allowed to take photos inside the house, but I found a couple online that show how elaborate this house is. It's amazing to think how much this house must have cost to build. We ended the afternoon with some coffee at Starbucks and some long-awaited sushi. Most of the sushi restaurants over here have a rotating conveyor belt where you grab what you like when it comes around. It was good, but not quite as fresh as back home. Overall, we had a great trip and might go back when it warms up.

A little about the physical beach...it was pebbly! Not sand!! There is no way that laying out would be comfortable. I have laid out on a pebbly beach in Italy and let me say that it is not the kind of relaxation you would hope for. I would have to say that the Brits should come a take a look at our beautiful Gulf beaches, especially Destin and its sugar white beaches and blue waters. Brighton had more of a Jersey shore atmosphere. It was still a nice little getaway!