Brighton-"London by the sea"

Our first real adventure in the U.K. was a trip to Brighton this past weekend.  The took a five hour coach in the morning headed south of London and arrived mid Saturday.  Our Hostel was called the Smart Sea View Hostel with a view of the water from the lobby, our room unfortunately did not have a view.  The first day we walked along the beach and visited the Brighton pier where hundreds of seagulls scared us away so we then had a casual yet classy sea side dinner at a small pub/restaurant.  Our night was very low key but it was much enjoyed after the busy week we had.  Sunday morning we packed up early, after filling ourselves with the Hostels complimentary breakfast, to go explore the town.  We did some shopping and got to see the lanes which is the more expensive stores.  It is a small town but in its center is the Royal Pavilion, a home built for the late King George IV.  We went on a tour of the Royal Pavilion however no photography was allowed inside the building which was a shame since the place was gorgeous and I wanted to share it with you all.  Every wall was decorated in a ravish Chinese wall paper, the ceilings were adorned with magnificent chandeliers and carvings of dragons and snakes.  We learnt that although the Pavilion was decorated with an ancient Chinese flare no one had yet to travel there and every piece of art was simply made from a photo and idea of what it would be like.  We ended our trip to Brighton with an early dinner of fish and chips on the waterfront.  Our trip seemed to go smoothly without one of my catastrophe stories however that changed upon our arrival home.  the next day i received a phone call from the Hostel that we had not paid for our stay.  I'll explain- we paid online for our hostel and the receipt had said we paid the full amount, which is odd since you usually just pay a booking fee.  So we brought the receipt so not to be charged twice and they accepted it, even making a photo copy, but apparently we were only charged the booking fee.  So we stayed in a hostel with free breakfast for the small sum of 6 pounds for the four of us.  Wasn't intentional but we lucked out big time.  This weekend my friends from Hungary whom I've already visited are coming to England to see me.  Tomorrow I will head into London with the other two Canadians to meet them and stay one night then we will all make our way back to Colchester late Saturday.