Sunny Springtime Brighton!

I managed to escape to jolly old Brighton last weekend for a good blast of seaside spring air! I'm lucky as I can stay with my best pal Claire, also known as Wife, who I hadn't yet seen this year - inexcusable! We made up for such an absence by spending all of the long weekend wandering the beach, hitting the shops, mooching around car boots & flea markets, and eating the biggest veggie roast dinner I've ever seen! I was pleased to finally take my new Kanken bag out for a spin, it's such a fantastic comfy backpack, I fitted all my weekend gear in it and it didn't give my back a hard time at all, highly recommended! 

Every time I visit Brighton, there's always a new splash of graffiti to admire, a cafe we haven't tried, a new exhibition to see. But I also have some firm favourite attractions that I always love to visit,  Utility (no nonsense British homeware), Jack and Linda's Smokehouse, Blackbird Tea Rooms and Infinity Foods (delicious healthy everything!). But this time Claire took me to a few of her own favourite haunts - we had a tasty rice bowl diner at Pompoko  which was the most packed out tiny restaurant I've ever been in, had to try and not poke fellow diners with my chopsticks, but delicious food and awesome green tea - try it! And she also introduced me to the gorgeous Bluebird Tea Co.  which had the most scrumptious, unique blends of loose tea I've ever seen! They all smelled amazing, and there was a lovely friendly chap who let us take our time choosing. You can get hot and cold takeaway drinks from here too, I had a Orange Matcha Almond Latte - I MUST be in Brighton when I'm strolling around sipping such a thing, yum! 

We took a wander into Kemptown where we stumbled upon the most gorgeous vintage shop, Rag and Bone, which was full of my favourite things : vintage garden themed items, oriental home ware and art, handmade aprons (photographed because they were absolutely beautiful!), vintage clothing, upcycled jewellery and all browsing accompanied by Radio 4 - perfect! Their window display was full of the joys of spring and Easter, I could have bought a wheelbarrow full of beautiful things!

I could never imagine going to a seaside town and not stepping on the beach, so despite the extremely breezy conditions we headed to the pebbles! I found this amazing fortune teller at the Mechanical Memories Museum which houses plenty of original penny arcade machines which you can play as you can buy a bag of pennies to fit the slots, proper nostalgic fun!

How gorgeous is this turquoise weather beaten paint on the beach railings? It's my favourite colour at the moment, I seen to be collecting all sorts of things in this shade. It was a gorgeous sunny day with clear blue skies but still, we were extremely windswept (terrible bad hair day!) and were being blown backwards, as these photos prove! But we ploughed on because tea and cake at Claire's house was on the agenda!

Claire's amazing rock, mineral and crystal collection was full of inspiring colours, patterns and textures. I was lucky enough to be given two gorgeous presents, a little Agate hippo and a polished Fluorite stone to start my own collection, those colours! My fortune cookie from the Oriental Market was a great one, whether it means literally or metaphorically, I'm all for it! 

It was a lovely long weekend, I was glad to be back with one of my closest friends, and with such lucky weather too! On my way home, even the sunset at Clapham Junction was pretty, rose tinted glasses after a mini break I bet! 

Do you have any favourite Brighton haunts I should be visiting? Hope you have a great weekend!

Katie