{"id":31423,"date":"2014-09-08T06:08:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T06:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expedia.blog.uk.sandwave.dev\/stories\/brighton-guided-tours-explore-citys-showpieces-2\/"},"modified":"2021-09-01T21:48:20","modified_gmt":"2021-09-01T21:48:20","slug":"brighton-guided-tours-explore-citys-showpieces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.expedia.co.uk\/stories\/brighton-guided-tours-explore-citys-showpieces\/","title":{"rendered":"Brighton: Guided Tours Explore City’s Showpieces"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Brighton has been part of my soul ever since I was knee-high to a crab stick. I pride myself on my seasider knowledge and claim to know every nook and every nuance of my beloved home town. But little did I know that Brighton has been hiding some deep, dark secrets from me.<\/p>\n

Recently I went on my first walking tour of the city with blue badge guide Ric Morris from Only In Brighton. Morris’s 80-minute tour is just one of a number on offer ranging from the Quadrophenia mods and rockers tour to a Piers and Queers version about the city’s LGBT history. I opt for Morris’s Only in Brighton tour on the promise he gives me that the lowdown on ABBA’s legendary Eurovision visit in the Seventies is included.<\/p>\n

Thinking I’d be the only resident in the group, I was pleased to see other locals join the tour.<\/p>\n

“It usually attracts a mix of locals and visitors, last night we had nearly 20 made up of residents, students and visitors from out of town,” says Morris.<\/p>\n

\n

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Credit: Garry Knight<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There’s only one place to meet and that’s outside Brighton’s most iconic home, the Royal Pavilion. Built in 1787 as a seaside retreat for the Prince of Wales, this gaudy and rather elaborate palace is like the Taj Mahal of the south east. When I was growing up, the pavilion with its onion-shaped turrets and ornate colonnades, was the epitome of the exotic and the closest I’d got to actually ‘being abroad’. Its royal resident, the good (or not-so-good, as it happens) George IV, the Prince Regent, led a strict life of hearty indulgence.<\/p>\n

“George was all about decadence,” explains Morris as we gaze up at his statue outside the Pavilion Gardens.<\/p>\n

“He was the original party boy who loved a drink and fine food, and had a fondness for fancy interiors, all of which are sentiments Brighton still carries today.” he says with a grin.<\/p>\n

As we wander the busy streets, Morris flip-flops between historic and modern facts, all delivered with a charming and often amusing reverence to the city. We pause outside the Brighton Dome, built in 1805 as the stables for the royal horses, which was transformed into a concert hall in 1870. A century later, it became famous as the venue where Pink Floyd first played the Dark Side of the Moon and ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest. Morris, a fountain of Eurovision knowledge, slipped us a few gossipy titbits about the contest; did you know that due to a dress malfunction, presenter Katie Boyle allegedly went commando on the night? No, me neither.<\/p>\n

\n

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The famous Run DMC mural
Credit: Beverley Goodwin<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We move on to the North Laines and stop for a moment by the famous Run DMC mural painted by street art legends, Odisy and Aroe. Brighton is renowned for its street art, and you can book the Oh I Do Like To Be Beside the Seaside half-day graffiti tour which tracks the best the city has to offer. We could also boast one of Banksy’s most famous murals, the Kissing Coppers, a black-and-white image of two policemen kissing, until recently when it was chipped off and sold to a US buyer for more than half a million dollars.<\/p>\n

From the North Laines we wind through the narrow, cobbled Lanes to the Town Hall, which performed one of the very first legal same-sex marriages earlier this year. As the proud gay capital of Europe, Brighton has since held thousands of similar ceremonies, a fact compounded by tonight’s scattering of ahem, penis-shaped confetti outside the main doors.<\/p>\n

The tour ends rather fittingly on Brighton beach, between the flashing neon lights of Brighton Pier and the crumbling remains of the West Pier. As a send-off Morris reminds us of the great writer and raconteur, Quentin Crisp, who famously remarked in his enunciated drawl that “Brighton was not exactly England, as I have always felt at home here.”<\/p>\n

And it’s true, Brighton is a rather different beast to your standard British city. It has a kitsch, sweet-scented glamour which rides side-by-side with an arty, alternative lifestyle, and of course, just a light sprinkling of saucy. <\/p>\n

\n

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Brighton’s iconic pier
Credit: Amipal<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

##### Like this piece? You might also be interested in these ones:<\/em>
Paris: Take The Road Less Travelled To Famous Montmarte<\/a><\/p>\n

Berlin: Stalinist Boulevard Reinvents Itself<\/a>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your guide to the best walking tours in Brighton, England, the perfect way to see the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":21144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,37,71],"tags":[24,16,69],"authors":[],"class_list":["post-31423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","category-best-of","category-city-break","tag-art","tag-best-of","tag-city-break","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBrighton: Guided Tours Explore City's Showpieces | Explore by Expedia<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Your guide to the best walking tours in Brighton, England, the perfect way to see the city.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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