September 14, 2017, by Chloe

City explorations: Birmingham

Back in June I wrote a post about nearby cities I wanted to visit before the end of term. In the end though, I went home earlier than I’d planned and I didn’t end up going on these day trips. Yesterday I had the chance to make up for it. My housemate and I decided to meet up in Birmingham for a day of shopping and exploring in order to catch up before uni started again.

 

 

 

 

Birmingham as a city was much bigger than I expected. My friend had mentioned to buy a return ticket from Nottingham, as she wasn’t sure where I’d be able to buy one at Birmingham New Station. I naively thought I’d be going to a small station, but it was HUGE. Seriously, the station is more like a shopping centre, you could easily spend a couple of hours in there alone. It reminded me more of London stations than any other I’d been in before. My friend laughed when I told her this, saying ‘of course it’s big as it’s the second city of England’ – well, I didn’t know that!

Shakesbear

I had a great day exploring the city, shopping and laughing at all of the Birmingham bears, my favourite being Shakesbear (I love a good pun). Birmingham is a great city to visit if you want to go shopping, as the Bullring has several shops that we don’t have here in Nottingham. It’s only an hour and a quarter by train making it perfect for Christmas shopping – Christmas will be here sooner than we think!

The bull outside of the Bullring shopping centre

It was fun being a tourist for the day – it’s definitely something I don’t do enough. There’s so many great places to explore around the Midlands – where should I go next?

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