 She was too exhausted to attend the wedding of her niece, Princess Charlotte of Prussia, in Berlin, in January 1878.In the Autumn of 1878, Queen Victoria paid for the Grand Ducal family to holiday in Eastbourne, where they stayed in a house on the Grand Parade.Alice performed various royal duties on this trip and visited her mother at Osborne before returning to the New Palace at Darmstadt in late 1878.