View of Brighton Beach
Once we had booked our trains (shout-out to the travel together Railcard, which saved us 30% off our train tickets), we had a look online to see which hotel to stay at in Brighton. We wanted to stay somewhere nice and close to the centre, we had a look on TripAdvisor and found the cutest hotel. The Artist Residence is located in Regency Square, which is very close to the Lanes and Brighton beach. The Artist Residence is a unique hotel, it's a 23-bedroom townhouse hotel with 2 restaurants, cocktail bar and ping pong room. Each room is individually designed, we stayed in the compact double room which had a sea view and a round bed! Yes, a round bed!
Our room at the Artist Residence
We arrived in Brighton quite early on Thursday morning, checked into our hotel and ventured out onto Brighton Pier. We had a little wander around the arcade, visited the shops and had a jump around on the huge trampolines. After working up an appetite we ventured to the Lanes and had a late brunch at The Breakfast Club. I had never been before so I wasn't sure what to expect. The brunch was good but not amazing. We ventured further into the Lanes and did some shopping at our favourite boutiques which included Jump the Gun, Beyond Retro and Bert's Homestore. We had made dinner reservations at SixtyFourDegrees as it was rated high on TripAdvisor. It's a very small place but the ambience is great. We sat at the end, right next to the kitchen, where we saw all the food being made. We received pre nibbles and pre-cocktails, we ordered 3 dishes each and they were really tasty. After the meal, we strolled along the seafront and stopped for a quick nightcap on the beach before heading back for a game of ping pong at the hotel.
The New Club
The next morning we packed up our stuff and headed to The New Club for some breakfast. I had the Cinnamon Buttermilk Pancakes which were incredibly good and Daniel had the full English. We had some time to kill before our train to Manchester so we chilled by Brighton Pier. There are no direct trains to Manchester from Brighton, so we had to go back to London first.
Hotel Gotham
We arrived in Manchester around 6pm on Friday, we headed straight to the Hotel Gotham, the hotel is quite pricey but we managed to get a really good deal online. The hotel is located in the center of Manchester and only a short walk from my favorite place the Northern Quarter. The hotel looks very plush and our room was huge! The bed alone was worth the price.
Hotel room in Hotel Gotham
Once unpacked and our outfits had been changed we headed to 63 Degrees, located in the Northern Quarter. We had a lovely 3-course meal and lots of wine, the menu is full of gorgeous french food. We weren't quite ready to call it a night, so we headed for some drinking in the Northern Quarter. We ended our night in an odd club full of rowdy kids, needless to say, we didn't stay too long.
63 Degrees
On Saturday we wanted to make the most of our day so we headed to the Alchemist for brunch and some cocktails. After brunch, we headed to the Affleck Centre for some shopping. I would recommend visiting the Affleck Centre if you had a bit of an emo/skater/punk past. We wondered around the Northern Quarter and had an early dinner. We headed back to the hotel, got changed and climbed to the cocktail bar which is at the top of the hotel. The views from the bar were stunning, you could see the whole of Manchester.
View from the Cocktail bar at Hotel Gotham
There is a great pub/club called the Star and Gater, it's located next to Piccadilly station. We've been there before for a Smiths night, but on this particular night they had an Indie night. I'm not sure what happened but we didn't get back to the hotel until 5am! 5am! I'm as shocked as you.
Matching outfits
On Sunday we had a very early call from the concierge because we had to be up early to get Glastonbury tickets. Somehow I managed to get through and get all the Glastonbury tickets we needed. After all the excitement of getting tickets we went back to sleep, sadly that was only for 2 hours. We packed up, handed in our keys and headed for some brunch (can you tell we really like brunch). We headed to Gorilla, which is surrounded by some of the most amazing graffiti in Manchester. We were so tired after our late night out we headed to the train station to see if we could get onto an early train. We were very lucky, they let us on the next departing train.
Manchester Graffiti
I hope you enjoyed this long post on my two favorite places to visit in England.
