Lewes Day Trip 01-21-09

Yesterday Jenny and I decided to take a day trip to Lewes, a cute little town in East Sussex about 20 minutes by bus from Brighton. It was GREAT!

We took the bus and as soon as we arrived we were on the "High Street" which I think is what they call all main streets/fancy shopping streets here. And as soon as we got out first of all you see the beautiful hilly green grass in the distance which is just beaaaaaaaaautiful! Once we started walking an incredible window display of gorgeous old books caught my eyes and we decided to go into this small 3 room bookstore called the Bow Window Book Shop. We ended up spending almost 2 hours in the tiny little shop, it was FILLED WITH TREASURES! There was a book about noses, all about noses, all about 'em! And a book about abdominal pains. And books abuot chess, and wild english birds, fighter pilots, and everything you could imagine. But they were all old and beautiful which makes them all automatically better. I ended up getting a small book about astronomy filled with beautiful images and star charts as well as an amazing vintage tourist's map of England and Wales from somewhere between 1889-1911. When I was checking out the lady was so sweet, she said that she loved seeing young people and to encourage us to keep up our interest in the books she took two pounds off my total bill! So sweet of her!

Once we left the book shop we started walking around towards the castle. Sadly the castle itself was closed becuase it is being rennovated, but it was still nice to see from the outside. As we walked around there we saw these people on this lawn playing some weird game and there was an older man also watching them so we asked him what they were doing. He started explaining that they were playing lawn bowling and then he started talking to us and telling us all about the history of Lewes and what we needed to see while we were here. He was sooo sweet and then his son joined us and we started walking around a little with them as they told us all about these crazy stories and things in Lewes. Then he called the lawn bowlers over and was like "These girls here are from America, tell them abuot this game!" ahaha so they came over and were super nice to us as well and explained lawn bowling to us. Then after talking a bit more to the nice old man and his son, they took our picture for us and then we went our seperate ways.

So Jenny and I continued walking around exploring and then we found ourselves kind of standing near this building wonderig if we should go in and who should appear in the doorway but the cute old man! So we waved to him and he gave us a thumbs up and motioned for us to come in, so we did. Inside we met his adorableeeeeeeeeeee cute old wife also named Jenny, and they invited us to have tea and coffee with them and their son! So we all had tea together and talked about America and politics and Brighton and Lewes and had a great time! It was so lovely! And they paid for our tea and hot cocoa which was really really nice of them. I love English people!

After that Jenny and I walked around some more, found the river, walked into a few interesting looking stores, and just wandered around exploring. As it got darker we decided to go have some dinner and we ate at the cutest little produce store and restaurant. And of course everyone there was just as nice as ever and one of the guys who worked there struck up a nice conversation with us and we learned that he is a student of economics at Oxford, and when we told him we were graphic designers he wanted to get our contact info because he is "a bit of an entrepreneur" himself, hahaha oh networking! He was nice!

Then we took the bus back to Brighton and walked straight to the nice old movie theater to go see The Wrestler with film club which was a good but depressing and mildly embarrassing movie. And after that we went to the Bath Arm's pub with Ally and her friends and had a great night! FUN TIMES IN ENGLAND!