![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Right. We have normality - I think! I've just survived sixteen miles on the bike (it was meant to be nineteen, but since I haven't touched a bike for quite literally months, I started to die a thousand deaths at eight miles and thought it prudent to turn around...) so I think it's time I regaled you all with the excitement (!) that was Birmingham.
I'm not a city chick. Not by any stretch of the imagination. London, I can cope with. Glasgow too. But the thought of visiting Birmingham filled me with inexpicable dread.
Things didn't start out well. I was driving Sophie, J was navigating - this was our first mistake. I usually do the navigating, you see, because J's not quite so adept with maps and all things map-related. Anyway, we were studiously following Google map's directions to the hotel, when we stopped at one of those humungous crossings where you have to cross three lines of traffic when the filter arrow's on. I was at the head of the queue, when I noticed a dark blue car trying to nose its way in between my car and the car behind. I thought nothing of it, until I next looked in my mirror, when I was gob-smacked to see a cop with chequered skipped cap pointing some kind of semi-automatic weapon into the driver's compartment of the following car. At this point, I was beginning to feel a bit like Alicia Silverstone in 'Clueless' during the mugging - firearms can be a wee bit unpredictable, as can cornered crooks, and the cars in the opposite lanes kept on coming...
Eventually, I managed to escape the unfolding drama and skip across towards the place where our hotel was supposed to be, but there was absolutely no trace of it. There followed a long period where we kind of knew where we wanted to go, but were thwarted at every turn by the most revolting series of underpasses, one way streets, etcetera that I've ever had the misfortune to meet in my life. Sophie, meanwhile, started to make uncomfortable gurgling noises - we pulled in, and she was overheating. We were worried she had a leak in the radiator, but it was nothing more serious than a failure of the fan to engage. A positive diagnosis, but one that's not much help when you're trying to find a hotel in a strange city where the urban planners appear to have been inspired by Huxley...
I normally pride myself on not needing a satnav, and I suppose there's a part of me that wonders if it would have been any easier using one - all in all, finding the bl***y hotel (which was very badly signposted) was a nightmare. In theory, it should not have been too difficult a task. We located Broad Street (very close to the hotel) almost immediately, and knew that the hotel lay to the north of one end of it. But actually managing to locate Broad Street amongst the Ring Roads and Bypasses From Hell proved to be far more difficult than we'd anticipated.
When we'd finally decanted ourselves out of the car (J managed to squeeze the ailing Sophie into a very small space, and only realised afterwards that he'd missed a metal stanchion by about 10mm) we discovered that our accomdation was clean, fresh, and austere. So much for budget hotels - they certainly are not to my taste. It was just little things that annoyed - the fact that there was nowhere to stow luggage, and they couldn't provide an extra pillow when asked. Things were not looking very good - both of us were both feeling a bit ungracious towards Birmingham and all things Brummy when we went out hunting for dinner. We travelled through a gloomy subway (boy, was I glad J was there!) and along a dark street, then stumbled across a Greek restaurant named 'Ulysses'. Why a Greek restaurant should be named 'Ulysses' escaped me at the time - our host later explained he does a mixture of Greek and Italian food, but after the odyssey we'd endured just finding the place and the spartan hotel we'd booked into, it seemed a perfect choice.
And after that, things started looking up. Continuing the Greek theme, I discovered that Birmingham is in possession of its very own Parthenon (the Library folk thought this comparison hilarious...) and the people we ran into were all very helpful, and hospitable. An added bonus which I never expected was a run-in with the Staffordshire Hoard ( http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/ - do check it out if you haven't come across it before).
Verdict: Art & Culture, 10 out of 10 (Boy, I wish I could've seen Bagpuss: The Stage Show. The mind truly boggles!!)
Retail, 10 out of 10 (If you like that sort of thing, which I personally don't. You seen one designer retail outlet, you seen 'em all, if you ask me...)
Architecture, 3 out of 10. (More of that to come - I mean, you really didn't think I'd have wandered in a strange city and not brought you back any pictures, did you?)
In other words, it wouldn't be my first choice for a holiday destination, but it was nice to find an excuse to visit the place.
As for Sophie... She's fully recovered from her trauma. Perhaps it was merely the shock of being stranded in a strange city with a driver she scarcely knew after being cloistered in a warm garage for 11 years.
I'm not a city chick. Not by any stretch of the imagination. London, I can cope with. Glasgow too. But the thought of visiting Birmingham filled me with inexpicable dread.
Things didn't start out well. I was driving Sophie, J was navigating - this was our first mistake. I usually do the navigating, you see, because J's not quite so adept with maps and all things map-related. Anyway, we were studiously following Google map's directions to the hotel, when we stopped at one of those humungous crossings where you have to cross three lines of traffic when the filter arrow's on. I was at the head of the queue, when I noticed a dark blue car trying to nose its way in between my car and the car behind. I thought nothing of it, until I next looked in my mirror, when I was gob-smacked to see a cop with chequered skipped cap pointing some kind of semi-automatic weapon into the driver's compartment of the following car. At this point, I was beginning to feel a bit like Alicia Silverstone in 'Clueless' during the mugging - firearms can be a wee bit unpredictable, as can cornered crooks, and the cars in the opposite lanes kept on coming...
Eventually, I managed to escape the unfolding drama and skip across towards the place where our hotel was supposed to be, but there was absolutely no trace of it. There followed a long period where we kind of knew where we wanted to go, but were thwarted at every turn by the most revolting series of underpasses, one way streets, etcetera that I've ever had the misfortune to meet in my life. Sophie, meanwhile, started to make uncomfortable gurgling noises - we pulled in, and she was overheating. We were worried she had a leak in the radiator, but it was nothing more serious than a failure of the fan to engage. A positive diagnosis, but one that's not much help when you're trying to find a hotel in a strange city where the urban planners appear to have been inspired by Huxley...
I normally pride myself on not needing a satnav, and I suppose there's a part of me that wonders if it would have been any easier using one - all in all, finding the bl***y hotel (which was very badly signposted) was a nightmare. In theory, it should not have been too difficult a task. We located Broad Street (very close to the hotel) almost immediately, and knew that the hotel lay to the north of one end of it. But actually managing to locate Broad Street amongst the Ring Roads and Bypasses From Hell proved to be far more difficult than we'd anticipated.
When we'd finally decanted ourselves out of the car (J managed to squeeze the ailing Sophie into a very small space, and only realised afterwards that he'd missed a metal stanchion by about 10mm) we discovered that our accomdation was clean, fresh, and austere. So much for budget hotels - they certainly are not to my taste. It was just little things that annoyed - the fact that there was nowhere to stow luggage, and they couldn't provide an extra pillow when asked. Things were not looking very good - both of us were both feeling a bit ungracious towards Birmingham and all things Brummy when we went out hunting for dinner. We travelled through a gloomy subway (boy, was I glad J was there!) and along a dark street, then stumbled across a Greek restaurant named 'Ulysses'. Why a Greek restaurant should be named 'Ulysses' escaped me at the time - our host later explained he does a mixture of Greek and Italian food, but after the odyssey we'd endured just finding the place and the spartan hotel we'd booked into, it seemed a perfect choice.
And after that, things started looking up. Continuing the Greek theme, I discovered that Birmingham is in possession of its very own Parthenon (the Library folk thought this comparison hilarious...) and the people we ran into were all very helpful, and hospitable. An added bonus which I never expected was a run-in with the Staffordshire Hoard ( http://www.staffordshirehoard.org.uk/ - do check it out if you haven't come across it before).
Verdict: Art & Culture, 10 out of 10 (Boy, I wish I could've seen Bagpuss: The Stage Show. The mind truly boggles!!)
Retail, 10 out of 10 (If you like that sort of thing, which I personally don't. You seen one designer retail outlet, you seen 'em all, if you ask me...)
Architecture, 3 out of 10. (More of that to come - I mean, you really didn't think I'd have wandered in a strange city and not brought you back any pictures, did you?)
In other words, it wouldn't be my first choice for a holiday destination, but it was nice to find an excuse to visit the place.
As for Sophie... She's fully recovered from her trauma. Perhaps it was merely the shock of being stranded in a strange city with a driver she scarcely knew after being cloistered in a warm garage for 11 years.
