When I asked Miss Frugal what she wanted to do when we had a week away at Butlins in Bognor Regis recently, she had just two requests – she wanted to visit the Brighton Sealife Centre and also see if we could find where Zoella lives in Brighton so we could drive past her house.
They’re the only things she asked to do the whole week so we headed off to Brighton one day in the middle of our week to see what we could do. We thought the Sealife centre would be the easiest thing to start with but we really struggled with parking as the Sealife centre itself doesn’t have parking nearby that we could see. We ended up parking a LONG walk away which on a hot day wasn’t ideal with two hot and thirsty children but I’m sure that there must have been something closer, even on a busy Summer’s day so if you’re planning on visiting then I’d just do some research beforehand so you know where you’re going to park.
It was worth the walk though!
We’re regular visitors to our local Sealife centre in Scarborough so I was a bit worried that the Brighton Sealife Centre would be very similar but it was quite different and the kids enjoyed it even more than they enjoy visiting the one near to us.
I thought the layout was really good here as a lot of the tanks are set around the edges of one large room which conveniently has a cafe in the middle. I wasn’t feeling particularly well that day so once I’d had a wander I was happy to sit and relax while Mr Frugal took the kids around to look at everything in more detail.
The room it was set in was beautiful and lit in what I think were the colours of Brighton Pride and I was happy to sit with my cup of tea and look at the gorgeous architecture – I think I took about 50 photos just of the ceiling itself. It’s only when I came home to Google what the building used to be that I found out that Brighton Sealife Centre is housed in the world’s oldest operating aquarium, with it’s original Victorian architecture. It was actually built in 1872 and it’s been so well looked after.
Ha, I bet you weren’t expecting me to tell you all about a building in a post about a Sealife centre were you?
Back to the animals now. 😉
We were really lucky that the kids had the opportunity to feed the giant turtles when we visited although not so lucky when the little rascals decided that they weren’t hungry though…. There are two giant turtles called Lulu and Gulliver and on the day we went Lulu was clearly playing hard to get as we didn’t catch more than a glimpse of her but Gulliver did decided to play the game after a lot of persuasion and it was worth the wait when the kids actually got to feed him.
All in all there are over 35oo animals to look at and admire at the Sealife centre with everything from the obvious fish, rays and sharks to the less obvious frogs and lizards. I think my favourite were the seahorses because they just seem so graceful as the move about.
We really enjoyed our visit to Brighton Sealife Centre and highly recommend a visit. You often see some great deals for entry to the various sealife centres across the country on cereal packets and chocolate bars wo do keep an eye out as it;s not the cheapest day out if you’re paying full price.
The next stop on her list was to see Zoella’s house and she was armed with the postcode and house number thanks to some Google research. I felt really uncomfortable with this to be honest as everyone’s entitled to privacy but she promised we would just drive by so we put the postcode into the SatNav and set off. I think Karma must have sent us some bad vibes though as the SatNav sent us down a oneway straight to a bus lane which was a bit scary and just made us want to get back to the safety of Butlins so we gave up (which pleased some of us more than others).
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