Started the morning in the dining hall, where I chatted with the other Americans, a couple where the wife had either worked with Shana or they had been students together. Shana and Spike joined me for breakfast, which was quite an honor considering it was their first breakfast as a married couple.
After breakfast there was nothing on my plate for the day until drinks with the bride & groom & friends, so I walked to the beach and found a bus tour of the city. It's a very pretty place, though a bit too touristy for my taste.
After the bus tour I did some walking, searching for lunch, and found a street where the outdoor dining was in the middle of the pavement, and had a pastie.
I think they spell it wrong - should be "pasty" because it tastes a lot like paste.
The Big Attraction in town is something called Brighton Pavilion, an ornate psuedo-Oriental/Indian/Middle Eastern construction which has a nice park inside, which includes the municipal theater. I spoent some time hanging around the park and walking through the gardens.
Finally it was time to meet for drinks at a bar on the beach. It was a nice informal gathering, we mostly stayed out on the lawn and chatted, and had a great time.
I was invited to join the families for dinner and drinks at the hotel, but decided to try a Thai place Spike & Shana had told me about, and joined the group afterwards. It was a bit of a walk to the Thai restaurant, cleverly hidden in a mostly residential neighborhood. I passed by it twice before I realized this was the place. The food was good, but not very Thai. They did not have Thai iced tea on the menu! When I asked the waitress in Thai if they had it, she said she would ask the chef. Apparently he dug into his own private stash for me. It was the real thing, unlinke the rest of the made-for-Brits-corporate menu.
The hotel where the group dinner was being held was the one Brian and Viv were staying at, not the one I was in a few blocks away, but I felt safe walking, after we had closed the bar, back to my hotel.
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