Welcome to Brighton!

Brighton Orientation

The main sight in Brighton is the Royal Pavilion, an old royal palace of King George 4th with a roof like the Taj Mahal, now a stately home museum. We thoroughly recommend visiting - it's really surprisingly good, outrageously decorated and lots of fun. We love the dragons on the dining room ceiling and the golden palm trees in the kitchen! The pavilion is set in the beautiful Pavilion Gardens, with buskers and cafes and directly next door is the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, the Dome concert hall, the Theatre Royal and adjacent to the Lanes and the North Laines areas for shopping, browsing, restaurants, bars & coffee shops.

The Lanes area is the old town of Brighton, a maze of tiny cobbled streets and alleys, now full of elegant boutique shops, designer stores, antique and jewellery shops. You'll also find Brighton's famous Chocky Wocky Doo Dah chocolate shop and cafe, in the Lanes, as well as many other coffee, cake & ice cream shops. In the evenings, The Lanes has many restaurants, pubs and bars, so is great to visit day and night.

The North Laines area, between the Royal Pavilion and the train station, is also great for browsing and shopping, being full of independent shops, unique to Brighton, including many alternative, vintage & bohemian sellers of clothes, home wares, jewellery, food, toiletries, etc, etc, etc. For more commercial shopping head along North Street to the Clock Tower and on to the Churchill Shopping Centre, where you'll find all the big shops you'll find on most UK high streets.

On the seafront, the British Airways i360 is Brighton's new viewing tower, in which you gently ascend and on a good day can see for maybe 40 miles in all directions, including the South Downs across the city and the Rampion Wind Farm extending from 8 to 16 miles out to sea. Just offshore you'll see the ruins of the old West Pier, and strolling further you'll find the Bandstand, the Peace Statue and then Hove Lawns, all of which makes for a very nice walk.

Back at the main Palace Pier, you'll find the Sealife Centre, the artists quarter with lots of galleries and shops along the seafront and the Volks Electric Railway, which goes along the beach, past the Madeira Lift, the Concorde 2 music venue and Brighton's famous Nudist Beach, almost as far as the Marina.

Our hotel is about 10 mins walk to the city centre and Royal Pavilion. You can either walk along the sea front or you can walk one street back from the sea front, turn left at the top of the road, along St James's Street, our little local high street in Brighton, which is also full of shops, restaurants, bars, pubs, plus a couple of supermarkets and post office, etc. The other way out of the hotel, turning right at the top of the road, takes you into old Kemptown Village, more popular with locals than tourists, and full of antique shops, little artisan butchers, bakers, greengrocers, etc, plus some lovely cafes & pubs.

For places to eat close to us, most of the restaurants along St James are good. See our favourites here. Alternatively, head into The Lanes, where you'll find an even wider choice.