crystalcazzie | Sussex Gin Fest & i360

Paul and I went to sunny Brighton on Saturday. The weather was definitely on our side and the sea looked absolutely beautiful...

As for our reasons for going to Brighton - I've been wanting to go up the i360 Tower for a while now and was considering taking a trip down for my birthday, so when I saw that Sussex Gin Fest was on the weekend before it seemed like the perfect time to go. Celebrating my Birthday Week by drinking copious amounts of gin on the sea front sounded good to me! =D

We started off with a free Bramble cocktail, which was very nice.

There were nine gin distilleries represented at the festival and we had to decide which one to go to first. Which one would we honour with our inaugural sampling?

Why, the one with the super cool dragon statue of course!

We sampled their gin and also got a cocktail from them...

I had a Bee's Knees. It had lemon and honey and was delicious!

There was also a charity tombola with some really good prizes, including full-sized bottles of gin. We had a go and my good luck struck again with a winning ticket! But did I win a delicious bottle of Sussex's finest?

No, I won a knitted rabbit! Shown here with my third cocktail of the day (A Sussex Sunset.) I named her Ginny and carried her around with me for most of the festival cos we went to the tombola quite early on. I think she enjoyed herself based on how mellow she looks.

All in all we tried about 13 samples of various gins (because some of the stalls had more than one on offer) and had four cocktails each. For our final ones we went for a Rocktail, which is a Gin & Tonic with Brighton Rock in it!

Mmmm, minty.

After drinking our way through all the Sussex gins we could, it was time for the other reason we ventured down to Brighton....

A ride on the British Airways i360! I hadn't actually realised before that the ring goes up and down. I thought it was just a tower with a cool observation deck, but this was even more awesome!

Thanks to the gorgeously sunny and clear day we were treated to some lovely views from the top of the tower.

The Sussex Gin Fest as seen from above!

We finished off the trip with pizza and wine before getting the train back. All in all it was an excellent day! I'm so glad I found out about the festival and decided to drag Paul along. I'll have to keep an eye out for similar events in the future.