I used to pity people who visit the same resort each year - stay at the same place, eat the same food - visit the same shops, do the same things. There's got to be more to life than that, surely?The irony of growing old(er) however is that occasionally you find somewhere so good that it's worth returning to over an over; where it's not much the familiarity that makes it fun, it's knowing in advance that it'll be effortlessly awesome.
This year we branched out slightly - not only changing room but to an entirely different hotel (risqué I know!) Having abandoned hope of a room with roll top bath & wood burning stove we lowered our expectations and opted for a room with balcony overlooking the pier (note railing in the foreground of the pic above). Two nights (Fri/Sat) cost us about £350 inc breakfast (which in age old tradition we slept through on Sunday).
Sea Spray's a few streets away from Paskins; slightly closer to the centre of Brighton. Like Paskins it also does a cooked vegan breakfast (not that this is strictly needed in Brighton, where you'll inevitably be eating a massive lunch a couple of hours later). Parking's expensive and on street only, costing a further £20. We were lucky enough to get a space directly outside the 1st night but had a 5 minute walk on the 2nd.
According to TripAdvisor the rooms vary massively - the general advice being to avoid the basement! We we quite pleased with our 1st floor room - whilst I'm not convinced that they fully pulled off the "Renaissance" theme that they were aiming for it was large, light and airy. The king sized bed was impressively comfortable and I got the best sleep I've had in a hotel in ages:
That view was too expense to only show once:
Breakfast was alright but fairly uninspiring (Paskins' is better). The first "vegan breakfast" came with fried eggs - the 2nd attempt looked a lot like this:
Would we stay there again? Maybe. I'm not sure it's worth the extra over Paskins - however comfortable the bed. Next time we may branch out further and go somewhere without vegan food - there's always cake to be eaten in town.
The weather this summer's been pretty crap in the UK. Occasionally there's a bright spell, but it's mostly been grey, wet and uncomfortably warm. Still, we chanced it anyway and had a couple of breaks on the South coast - a very wet and miserable week in Dorset and a slightly more favorable weekend in Brighton.
Other than lots of shopping; we took an impulse ride on the Brighton Wheel:
Ate Aloka mint choc chip icecream on the beach:
Drank booze and ate lemon cheesecake on the beach:
Continued the booze-a-thon in Terre a Terre (highly recommend 
Had lunch at Wai Kika Moo Kau (remembering not to order the ridiculously huge chilli burger this time):
Ate raw desserts at Aloka:
Had we known that Aloka was about to close we'd have had a full meal there :(
We'd heard good things about their vegan breakfast, but we weren't impressed enough to bother going down on the second morning and opted for a lie in instead:
We'd planned to check out VBites on the way down, but were running short on time so ate some redwoods food straight from the packet in the car instead ;)
Tapas was tapas - pretty much the same as last year's and unfortunately for us a rehash of starters!
The desserts were pants. Seriously Terre-a-Terre, if you're reading this: go across the road to Aloka and try their raw vegan desserts - no competition! At the very least, keep your gorgeous frangipane on the menu at all times.
Terre-a-Terre's still a great place to visit and I'll continue to rank it highly, but it really is a shame they don't ensure a good selection of vegan options at all times. 
It included a couple of loaves of sourdough bread (the sesame seed was nicer than the plain) and this rather bizarre turd shaped thing:
(which thankfully tasted better than it looked). We ate it on bread, but you can probably cook it somehow.
