We were able to get out to a town called Brighton today. It's close to an hour and a half to get there depending on traffic. Chris's dad found a Royal Pavilion in one of his books and this place was certainly grand. I wish we could've taken pictures inside (I did sneak one at the very end) which I'll post. But here's a link so you can see some of the amazing architecture inside http://www.royalpavilion.org.uk/. If you click the link, I would definitely then click on the one that says "banqueting room." You'll see the in the lower right, a dragon, this holds an amazing chandelier in the middle of the room. So you walk in and see this huge light held by this enormous dragon. 
This is the picture I took inside (that I shouldn't have).
This place used to be a farm house and then King George the IV had it remodeled to look like Chinese architecture. The inside also followed a Chinese theme. What was amazing, was that the people who did all the renovating and decorating never had gone to China. King George used this home to meet with his mistress. Although, he had secretly married this woman many years before and had a child with her. He then married another woman, openly, and had another legitimate child, a girl, with her, but shortly after ignored this wife. It then went down the line of his family for a bit and then the town of Brighton bought it.
What else that was amazing about this place was that an arsonist set fire to the music room in 1975. After 11 years of restoring this room to look like it used to, and painstakingly fixing the ceiling that had gold shell-looking mosaic to it (over 6000 shells), a big storm in 1987 happened in Brighton and one of the big stone balls on a "minaret" (whatever that is), blew off and fell through the ceiling in that same room. I would be like, "OH MAN?!?!?!" That sucks! But today, you'd never know a fire or a stone had ever hit this room.
In fact, while we were there, in another room, they were restoring some gold looking paint on to some woodwork and they showed how they were able to find some original wall paper and are planning on restoring the room to this original wall paper. I do have to say, the English certainly love their history and do a lot to preserve these types of houses, castles, etc. to keep it's original authenticity to the best of their ability.
Makenna was fairly well behaved except for her step fetish which meant standing near the steps for 15-20 minutes at a time while she went up and down them. Then I literally had to drag her off of them and show her there were other steps in the house. So she could go up and down those while I looked in that room. When I asked her to come where I was and away from the steps, she would turn to me and say "bye-bye". We try that whole "bye-bye" thing with her so that she thinks we're leaving and sometimes she turns it back on us.
We did stop in the Brighton Museum which was right there but it wasn't all that exciting. In fact, we were only in it for maybe 15 minutes. Makenna had more fun chasing the pigeons and other birds outside so we let her do that for a while before returning home.
This is the picture I took inside (that I shouldn't have).This place used to be a farm house and then King George the IV had it remodeled to look like Chinese architecture. The inside also followed a Chinese theme. What was amazing, was that the people who did all the renovating and decorating never had gone to China. King George used this home to meet with his mistress. Although, he had secretly married this woman many years before and had a child with her. He then married another woman, openly, and had another legitimate child, a girl, with her, but shortly after ignored this wife. It then went down the line of his family for a bit and then the town of Brighton bought it.
What else that was amazing about this place was that an arsonist set fire to the music room in 1975. After 11 years of restoring this room to look like it used to, and painstakingly fixing the ceiling that had gold shell-looking mosaic to it (over 6000 shells), a big storm in 1987 happened in Brighton and one of the big stone balls on a "minaret" (whatever that is), blew off and fell through the ceiling in that same room. I would be like, "OH MAN?!?!?!" That sucks! But today, you'd never know a fire or a stone had ever hit this room.
In fact, while we were there, in another room, they were restoring some gold looking paint on to some woodwork and they showed how they were able to find some original wall paper and are planning on restoring the room to this original wall paper. I do have to say, the English certainly love their history and do a lot to preserve these types of houses, castles, etc. to keep it's original authenticity to the best of their ability.
Makenna was fairly well behaved except for her step fetish which meant standing near the steps for 15-20 minutes at a time while she went up and down them. Then I literally had to drag her off of them and show her there were other steps in the house. So she could go up and down those while I looked in that room. When I asked her to come where I was and away from the steps, she would turn to me and say "bye-bye". We try that whole "bye-bye" thing with her so that she thinks we're leaving and sometimes she turns it back on us.
We did stop in the Brighton Museum which was right there but it wasn't all that exciting. In fact, we were only in it for maybe 15 minutes. Makenna had more fun chasing the pigeons and other birds outside so we let her do that for a while before returning home.
This picture was too cute not to add. We stopped at a pizza/pasta bar for lunch and Makenna really enjoyed the Ziti noodles in sauce. She practically had a whole bowl full.
No comments:
Post a Comment