Birmingham, England
The weekend of March 4 and 5 I decided to go on a big adventure to Birmingham. The whole reason for this is that it is the sister city to where I grew up. I’ve always heard about it I wondered what it was like, so I just had to go since I am close enough. Although it was about a three-hour train ride from Leeds. But what else was I going to do? There’s literally nothing to do in Castleford, so I thought why not?!
When I got to Birmingham, I immediately went on a walking tour of Peaky Blinders. Essentially what I learned is the Peaky Blinders were a street gang based in Birmingham, which operated from the 1880s until the 1910s. The group consisted largely of young criminals from lower- to middle-class backgrounds. The tour guide told us that they were primarily teen boys, not older hardened criminals. He took us around to different places and told us where the rival gangs typically were. But the guy is a 20-year-old entrepreneur major in college at Aston University. He said this tour business is part of his project. He’s creating the businesses on his own; it’s quite impressive actually. So while it was somewhat interesting to learn about the different gangsters and getting to see the areas where they were, I actually enjoyed having a conversation with him about entrepreneurship and how he created it along with his future plans for growing his business. It makes me think..is there some way I could do this in Lincoln? Because essentially, he just figured out a need – something that wasn’t being offered and offered – and started creating it. He said quickly he went to be number one on TripAdvisor.
The tour itself was OK. I felt like there was a bit too much walking without seeing things or stopping to learn things. Also, my thoughts about the town quickly formed on this tour because everywhere we went there was a bunch of trash just on the road and everywhere. It’s like they don’t have city employees to clean up the streets or something. It was pretty bad in lots of places to be honest. Perhaps if I had known more about Peaky Blinders before I went on this tour, I would’ve been more interested. I had heard of the show but I had not watched it. Maybe I will now. But regardless, it was a good way to see the city and get some steps in.
Here are a few photos of the old mixing with the new architecture of the city. I did think that was pretty cool. If I had had time to take an architecture tour, I would totally have done that.
I did the tour with my backpack since I just got off the train and went to it. After the tour, I was tired of holding onto my backpack so I walked to the hotel. It was called the Pentahotel. It was the most inexpensive room that I could find and it was about €130 per night which is about probably $150. What you might expect for booking it on the day before you go, I guess. The hotel was fine. Pretty central, I guess. During the afternoon, I talked on the phone with my friend Viktor. It was so great to talk to him and hear about his life and tell him about all of my adventures I’ve had recently. I feel like I haven’t talked to most of my US friends in about a month because the time difference is hard, and it’s a really busy and hard part of the semester for them. I have been feeling a little bit homesick lately and it was nice to talk with him. Also, I talked with my friend Mary yesterday who I haven’t talked with in a while. It was equally as wonderful to talk with her.
I got hungry eventually, so for dinner, I googled some cool places to go and found a place called Gas Street Social which looked like a cute place to go. It was only a five-minute walk, which was ultimately why I went there. I was tired, but just need something to eat. The way you order foot at most of the restaurants in the UK is annoying to me. So you sit down at a table and it has a number on it. Then you can either scan the QR code on the table order and pay that way, and they will bring the food to you, or you can go up to the bar and order. I greatly dislike ordering on the app, so I always go up to the bar. But this has happened twice now: while I’m gone up to the bar to order, somebody comes and sits at my table. I mean, how am I supposed to let people know that I’m occupying that table? I did leave my coat there once before, but someone still came and sat at my table! Anyway, when the girl behind the bar asked my table number, I told her I couldn’t find the table number so I pointed to where I was sitting. However, apparently someone was sitting at the table. Also, this place didn’t actually have table numbers, so it was a really stupid procedure that doesn’t seem to work. Anyway, the girl at the bar had to sort out another table for me and I ordered and eventually they brought my food, no problem. I ordered sweet potato falafel tacos with some five-bean chili on them. It was a weird combination but I wanted tacos and that sounded pretty good.
The other thing is that I’ve been eating a lot of vegetarian food in the UK more than I normally would, not because I’m trying to be a vegetarian, because there are lots of really yummy options here. My food was pretty good. It would’ve been better if that chili hadn’t been on top of it. But oh well. So I finished my meal and got up and left. The walk back to my hotel was a little bit sketchy because there were not a lot of other people walking in that area. I always try to keep my eyes peeled and be aware of my surroundings in situations like that. I’ve not encountered anything bad, but you just never know. And it is a little unnerving when you’re the only one walking down the street in the dark. I got back to my hotel kind of early because these days I’m not much of a night owl. I enjoy sitting in a hotel room and relaxing, so that’s exactly what I did. I talked to my Ghanaian friend Delali for a bit as well. She graduated with her Ph.D. today so it was great to talk with her and see some of the pics that she took during the day. I talk to her a lot more than my US friends because she is on the same time zone as me and it’s much easier. She has been so great while I’ve been here because we have talked a lot; almost daily, which has been so great.
Isn't she just great?!
Sunday morning, I slept in which only meant I slept till about 8. I literally watched some TV on Netflix and had some in-room coffee and lounged for a while. I also worked a bit on my blog before leaving for the day. What’s annoying and maybe surprising to me is that most breakfast places don’t open until 10 AM, even on the weekend! So that’s kind of what I was waiting for. My plan was to go visit the library, even though it was closed, but I wanted to see the outside architecture because it looked amazing in pictures. So I walked there and it was awesome!
Then I walked to an area of town called the Jewellery Quarter and had an amazing breakfast at this coffee shop called Urban Café. I looked up a bunch of different coffee shops online and this one was what I settled on because they had this amazing avocado toast with poached eggs on it, which looked like what I wanted for breakfast. And it was everything! I also ordered some hashbrowns that were quite good as well. That tasted a bit like American food which I have missed. And I had a vanilla latte of course, which was also amazing. I got a lot of work done this morning, but only sat there for maybe an hour.
Then I wanted to go back into the middle of town so I looked up yet another coffee shop called 200 Degrees and walked in that direction. I wanted to be close by the train station so that it would just be easier to make my train, and this coffee shop was right next to it. One of the things I love doing is going to different coffee shops around town and enjoying the walk along the way. I guess you’ve probably figured that out by now, but a lot of the way I go about seeing a city is to google a cool restaurant or pub or coffee shop and walk there. It’s not a bad way to see a new city!
Anyway, I just had a cup of coffee at the second coffee shop and worked a little bit on a paper. It’s amazing what traveling around will do for your inspiration. I’ve been very inspired this weekend to get some work done simply because I have a beautiful scenery around me and lovely coffee shops to sit in.
After that, I walked to the train station and found the platform I was supposed to be on. I had to ask one worker, but she pointed me in the direction I was already going in which was nice. I feel like I have gotten the hang of traveling between cities! I easily made it back to Castleford with no problems. Got there around 4 PM and all the stores were already closed for the day! I couldn’t get anything from the grocery store, which was a bit disappointing.
I went home and relaxed and read my book. It’s called I Hope There’s a Kettle in My Room by Paula Rooney. It’s about this lady who did a solo trip around Europe for a month at the age of 55. Such a great read for such a time as this in my life. I’m so grateful for this amazing opportunity that I have to travel around the UK and a bit of Europe. I’m trying to live in the moment and appreciate everything, even if every town is not what I expected or not as beautiful as I would like it to be. The fact that I am doing this is just incredible. Even when I get homesick I still think about how incredible this trip is and how I will wish that I was still here when I’m back home. The homesickness does not last very long, and I’m mostly just happy to be on this amazing journey!
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