Brighton

Yesterday, despite the chilly wind and rain predictions, Kirsten and I braved the weather and set off to Brighton. I have been to Brighton before, this was the first time I'd been when the weather had been less than blue (I know, lucky me). However, it gave me the opportunity to experiment more with my new lens (which I'm still loving), and take some more artsy-fartsy pictures, as I'm sure you'll notice.

Above is a new piece of graffiti that we noticed. Not sure what the meaning is or what kind of point it's trying to make, but it's pretty amusing. Although it looks very much in the style of some of the Banksy stuff you can (apparently) find around the city, I don't think that it is.

No trip to Brighton is, of course, complete without a visit to their famous coloured beach huts. I went a little Photoshop crazy on the right side picture, but I thought it was only fitting since it is nearly Valentine's Day. So Happy Valentine's Day from Brighton.

Another very interesting thing that we got to witness was the birds over the Pier. Apparently these Starlings group together and fly together every evening in the winter, because they roost underneath the pier. I have heard of Starlings doing this before, but it was always out in the countryside. It's a pretty awesome sight. They say that Brighton can attract almost 40,000 birds a night during the winter.

Kirsten took some videos, too, which I might upload later. The videos, far better than the pictures, give an idea of how fluid their motions are as a group.

Although it did feel a little bit as though I was an extra in some sort of bird-themed horror movie.

I like this pictures because you can see, way above the Starlings, that a flock of geese are setting off somewhere. I thought it was neat to capture both sets of birds.

After watching the birds for a while and winning some lame key chains from the arcade inside, we finished off the evening by grabbing some fish and chips - what else? - from the local restaurant before setting off back to London. Even though the weather was miserable most of the day, I had lots of fun.

Tonight we're going to see Cirque du Soliel - a gift from Kirsten for mah birthday - which I'm very very excited about. Tamryn went to see it last night and came home raving about it, which is a good sign.