Birmingham...

Well another weekend is sadly over, but it was quite a good weekend overall. On Saturday we made our first trip to Birmingham, which is about 20-40 minutes (depending on your mode of transportation) to the south-east of Wolverhampton. It is the second largest city in England, second only to London. It is a very industrial city, much like Wolverhampton, but is great place to make day trip to. We left Wolverhampton about 2:30 by the tram that runs directly into Birmingham every 8 minutes for only £3.80 round-trip. Although Birmingham is mostly a industrial city, it has more shopping than any place I have every been. Its main attraction is the Bullring Market, which is an ultra-modern 3 part shopping mall. I personally was not so intrigued by the shopping as I was the fact that it had a KRISPY KREME!!! Talk about feeling like you are home! It also had a shop that sold every American food that we can't get in the local supermarkets, such as Fluff, Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup, Jelly Belly's and much more! However, we refrained from purchasing any of these indulgences, because they came for a price! They wanted £2.80 for the small jar of Fluff, which that is about $5.50! Anyways, it was nice to know it was there in case I come down with a sudden/dying urge for Fluff. They also had several Starbucks which is always nice to see. After we finished in the mall, it was sadly dark, but we continued our journey towards the heart of the city. We found Victoria Square which was beautiful at night, so I can't wait to go back during the day and take some more pictures. However, the highlight of my trip was when we found a giant TV in the square that was showing the England v. Scotland rugby game! People were gathered to watch it everywhere! It is really nice to be able to finally watch a sport that I love so much without having to pay for it. We then continued on to find some place reasonable to eat dinner, but the problem we kept running into was that most of the places had stopped serving food in order to get ready for the busy night life. We finally found a place we had eaten before in Wolverhampton and knew we could get a decent inexpensive meal. After taking our time eating and having a drink, we made our way back to the train/tram station to head back. It was a good first visit, and I am sure I will be back again soon.

On Sunday, Sarah and I made our way to a local sports bar to watch the Ireland v. Wales rugby game (Which I had heard about during the game we saw in Birmingham). I was very cool to see how passionate people were for a sport that most in the US don't even understand, which I really enjoyed. Last night I also made an attempt to stay up and watch the Superbowl on my computer (keep in mind the game did not start till 11:30 here!). I made it till the end of 3rd quarter and began to doze off, I woke to the celebration of the Colts. Oh well, there is always next year to watch it start to finish.

Well, that's about all I got this time. I posted some more pictures, which I have labeled by the day I updated them. Thanks for all your comments and support!

Cheers,
Justin