Showing posts with label Touristy Stuff. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Touristy Stuff. Show all posts

Birmingham Trip - Bullring & Cadburys World

Monday, October 10, 2011
Spencer and I booked a trip to Cadburys World through Groupon a while ago. We paid £49 for the two of us and got an overnight stay in the Park Inn, an evening meal, breakfast and entrance to Cadburys World. Not bad!

We drove down on the Saturday and checked into the hotel, it wasn't anything special but it wasn't anything bad, just your standard chain hotel.

The Park Inn, Walsall

The room was spacious and the bed comfortable, we had a little TV which meant I got to watch the X Factor :)
The En Suite was lovely, a walk in shower and loads of mirrors.
It wasn't too noisy, I did get woke up once at about 6 in the morning due to an annoying lorry reversing, you know the noise "Warning, vehicle reversing beep beep, warning..." apart from that it was quite.
The staff weren't overly friendly, but they weren't rude either.
The evening meal was nice, not a lot of choice but what we had was nice.
The breakfast was a grease fest, I couldn't eat mine.
The hotel is right opposite a train station, there are trains running from there to Birmingham New Street frequently and it only costs £3.20 return.

On day one we caught the train into Birmingham. We didn't have long as we arrived quite late and didn't want to be going back to the hotel in the dark as the train station was in a quiet area and we weren't sure if there would be gangs hanging around there later on.



It was ridiculously busy there, I'm not sure if you can see in the photo below there are people queuing to use the escalators!

I didn't buy much because the queues were too big and the shops were all boiling, it put me out of the shopping mood!

We went to Selfridges, the food hall was fab! They have a bull made out of Jelly Beans!

 and American candy...

On day two we took our trip to Cadburys World. It was amazing!



When we went in we were given two bars of chocolate, a Crunchie and a Curly Wurly. Further through the tour we were given a little shot glass sized cup of melted chocolate and a spoon, then a bar of Dairy Milk. At the end we got to go in Essence where they had a choice of Marshmallows, Shortbread, Rice Krispies, Popcorn, Wine Gums and Jelly Babies, they gave you your choice covered in warm melted chocolate.


I had popcorn :)

Spencer had wine gums :-/
We had a lovely day, we learnt a lot of Cadburys history, it seems that Mr Cadbury was a lovely man to work for! We saw the chocolate being packed by the machines and various other bits of the factory. We went on a bizarre little ride with lots of dancing cocoa beans and learnt all about the history of chocolate.

Here are some other photos from the weekend...

jumper and scarf both Primark

giant Flake in the Cadburys shop



the Cadburys Gorilla

Chocolate Spencer

the nicest hot chocolate I've ever tried! Marshmallows, hot chocolate, cream, chocolate sprinkles & flake :)

chocolate cake
Have you been to Cadburys World before? If so what did you think of it?



Week in Photos #28

Sunday, September 18, 2011
This week has been...

FUN - this was technically last week but I didn't do a week in photos last week so its going in with this week! We went up the local pub where a live band were playing. We missed the band but went up in time to see our mate Mikey take over the microphone to sing Oasis, he has even got the Gallagher pose going on!


DEPRESSING - I don't know about everywhere else but the weather in Wales has been horrific. The rain has been pouring and it has been freezing! I've spent most evenings cwtched up in my onsie!

A SHOCK - I was very surprised to discover that my sunflowers have actually started flowering. I'm wondering if they are maybe a little backwards, flowering now that its like winter!

INTERESTING - We picked this up in a shop in Cardiff on Saturday. Its strange.




TOURISTY - My future brother-in-law came down for the weekend with his partner. He lives in Wokingham and she has recently moved with England from Turkey. This is only the second time that she has been to visit Wales so we tried to cram a lot in! 

We spent the day/night in Cardiff on Saturday. We started with some serious shopping which ended quite abruptly when Leighton (bro-in-law) stopped a shop lifter, not once, but twice! We were walking through one of the arcades in Cardiff when a bloke came running out of a shop with some coats. Leighton managed to grab him and they took him into the shop. The security guard was quite old and didn't look like he could handle the situation, Leighton had a feeling that the thief might escape so he hung around. He was right, the bloke came running from the shop so Leighton and another guy chased him from the arcade and managed to catch him in the next arcade, he fell and cut his head open then peed himself when they held him on the floor waiting for the Police - all quite interesting! 
We had a drink to calm the nerves and then headed over to Cardiff Bay. We were planning on going on a speedboat trip but due to the weather we chickened out! We had a walk around the Bay, visited the Torchwood shrine and several other landmarks before heading to Terra Nova for a few more drinks! We then had a lovely meal in Bosphorus, a Turkish restaurant, as Leighton's girlfriend is Turkish!
Today we went up to Blaenavon railway. Spencer and Leighton's father volunteers up there restoring the old railway line. They extended it and had a grand opening on Friday. We had a backstage tour courtesy of dad-in-law which meant donning the neon orange jackets! It was very interesting and it really is so pretty watching the steam trains climb through the valleys.




YUM - The first two photos are two of my four courses that I had in Bosphorus! We had the feast which is a small selection of various dishes, it was gorgeous! We stopped at Krispy Kreme earlier in the day, I now have enough stamps on my card to have my next drink free. The last photos is my lunch on Friday, there is a steak hidden under the mushrooms and onion rings. I didn't eat anything else all day so figured that this was okay for my diet. As for the rest I came off the diet for the weekend!

I hope that you've all had a lovely week and am sorry that I've been a bit absent, as you can see the weekend has been hectic!



London Glee Trip

Wednesday, June 29, 2011
I want to start this post by saying a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who reads my blog, I'm almost at 10,000 page views! When I started this blog it was just a personal thing for me, I didn't except one view let alone this many! So, yeah, thank you all so much for finding my ramblings interesting!

Those of you follow me on Twitter will know that I went to London to watch Glee at the O2 arena yesterday. It was amazing, as predicted! Here is the story of my trip!

We caught the bus down with National Express from Newport, it only cost something like £20 return for the two of us - bargainous! It takes approximately three hours to get there so I loaded my ipod with Glee songs, the latest top 40, Oasis, GaGa, Adele, the works, it kept me entertained and I had loads of "OMG I love this song" moments!

The coach dropped us off at Victoria Coach Station. We went over to Harrods from Victoria. Spencer had never been there before and I'd never made it up to the pet floor so we had a nosey around. I want a Chiwawa, Spencer won't let me! They were so cute, the price tag wasn't! Something like £2,500! We had a look at the cat collars, some of them were lovely, but £150 for a cat collar - seriously! I do love my cats but that is just ridiculous!

We then had a browse around the home ware section, there were some gorgeous items there but again, ridiculously priced, as expected! We then made our way down to the Laduree section as I was dying to try some of their Macaroons! We bought two each to try, next time I'm going I'm buying a box as they were scrummy! The woman in front of us spent £176.40!! Just in Laduree! Crazy!


After Harrods we decided to try and find our hotel! It was surprisingly easy. We stayed at Custom House Hotel which we booked through lastminute.com. We booked it through lastminute.com because it was a lot cheaper than booking it through the hotel direct! We paid something like £50 for one night which I think is very good for London! The hotel was situated in a brilliant place, straight opposite the exit to the DLR. We left the concert and were back at the hotel within twenty minutes so I would certainly recommend this hotel to anyone looking for cheap accommodation within a reasonable distance to the O2. The major let down of the hotel was that we were in a smoking room, I didn't even think it was legal to have smoking rooms in hotels since the smoking ban? The room smelt quite strongly of smoke, we didn't bother complaining as we were only there for the one night, however if I was staying there again I would specifically state that I wanted a non smoking room. The room wasn't anything special, but it was clean, just what you'd expect for a budget hotel. Its a massive hotel with several different restaurants/cafes on site. We had our tea in the cafe and it was quite cheap. I had lasagne and Spencer had a burger, we both had a coke and it came to roughly £18.



We then headed over to the O2 for the main event! Glee!


Our seats weren't brilliant, but they were okay. We were on the side and really high up. We were looking down directly onto the stage but couldn't see the screens properly as there were only two either side of the stage. The warm up was a dance act called LXD. They were quite amusing, but sitting where we were wasn't really ideal for a dance act as we couldn't see it well enough. When they were finished after waiting for what seemed like ages we thought the show had started. It hadn't. A load of people dressed as cheerios were running around throwing stuff out to the crowd. When they were finished Sue Sylvester came on the screen and explained that they were throwing out Barf Bags, because we'd need them! The screen then cut to her and Mr Schue having a bit of a bicker - then the show started! They opened with Don't Stop Believing - it was amazing!





They remained in character throughout the show and did little sketches with the TV screen going back to Mr Schue and Sue Sylvester, I was disappointed that those two weren't there. Brittany did her raunchy Britney spears cover which was amazing! She was HOT!!


They banged out hit after hit, some solos, some groups. Rachel was just as amazing in real life! I was shocked to see that she had a tattoo on her wrist, doesn't fit with her image at all! I wonder if its always been there and they cover it with camouflage make up for the show?




The Warblers were also there, which was a nice surprise as I had no idea they'd be there, they sang three songs all of which were amazing, Spencer even went as far to say that they were better than Glee!





Arty sang the Safety Dance song, it was quite amusing seeing him up out of his wheelchair dancing around the stage! Another really funny moment was Kurt and Blaine. Kurt made Blaine close his eyes, he went on to put a bearskin hat on Blaine and a Royal tunic on himself! Apparently its not the first time they've dressed each other up! He told Blaine he wanted to propose to him as it felt right, we got all excited! He 'proposed' that Blaine join Glee club, to which he said yes!

There were so many good songs and funny moments I could be here forever! They finished with Loser Like Me. They were then all handed cups that looked like Slushie, which they threw all over the audience! It turned out that they actually contained streamers so it was all pretty :)

We had a fantastic trip and the concert was amazing! I'm now an even bigger Gleek then before!