When I mentioned to our neighbour that we were heading to Birmingham for the weekend, he frowned, then asked if we were planning to visit Spaghetti Junction. I’ll grant you, Birmingham isn’t the most common option for a UK city break, as I discovered while researching blog posts for ideas of places to go. However, it had looked interesting on the Commonwealth Games, it was my mum’s birthday, and it would take us roughly the same time to get there from Sussex as it’d take her and my stepdad, Ken, to travel from Lincolnshire, so we went for it.  

Spaghetti Junction will just have to wait because we decided to take the train. We paid £60 each for our return trip, and it took us about four hours, so was roughly equivalent to driving. The mad part of it is that the train from London Euston to Birmingham New Street took the same amount of time as it takes us to get to London from our local station in East Sussex. We had reserved seats on the London-Birmingham legs of the journey, so that was great. There were two downsides to the train: 

• The seat reservation signage wasn’t exactly working on either journey, but people without reserved seats shuffled around as needed
• It seems to be ok to watch things on your phone without headphones nowadays – next time I’d take some noise cancelling headphones along to drown the other travellers out

Even with those downsides, I am a very car-sick person, so being able to sit on a train and read my book was a million times better than staring furiously out of the windscreen with the window cracked open for fresh air.

To Broad Street we go!

The first thing we did upon arriving at New Street Station was greet Ozzy, the Raging Bull who was such an icon during the Commonwealth Games. He’s now taken up permanent residence in the station and is proving very popular with travellers. He’s 10 metres tall, so I’m glad he’s not planning to take a train any time soon. 

From one Ozzy to another, we crossed Black Sabbath Bridge on the way to the hotel, making Ken a very happy man!

Ah, the hotel. I want to get this out the way and move onto all the goof stuff. We stayed at the Hampton by Hilton on Broad Street, and it was yet another link in the chain of disappointing Hilton experiences I’ve had recently. Dated décor, lumpy pillows, noisy pipes, and a broken bathroom door were all minor disappointments compared to the previous guest’s toenail which I found in my room 🙁

Broad Street is Birmingham’s party strip, and (aside from the weather) it felt like we were walking around a Mediterranean resort. It didn’t seem to matter what time of day or night we were walking to or from our hotel, people were ready to party, and they didn’t lack options for where to go. We weren’t the target market, but it was fun to people watch. 

Around Gas Street Basin and Brindleyplace

For our first Brummie lunch, we decided to head down to Gas Street Basin, to check out the canal and Gas Street Social. Birmingham expanded rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, in part thanks to its central position on the canal network, with barges transporting raw materials in and finished goods out. With the advent of road and rail transport, the canal network and surrounding area declined, until the city council began a regeneration effort in the 1980s. Nowadays this is a buzzy area to wander round, or indeed experience from a canal boat. Sadly, we missed the boat tour, but we found ourselves back in this area a couple of times over the weekend, and it’s understandably very popular. I love being near water, even if there isn’t a swimming opportunity, so I was in heaven. There are lots of bars and restaurants along this stretch where you can watch the world go by. 

After lunch we wandered along the canal to Ikon Gallery, where we saw an exhibition of videos of Melati Suryodarmo’s performance art, one of which (I’m a Ghost in My Own House) took place at Ikon in May this year. The gallery assistant in the exhibition space was very knowledgeable and passionate about the exhibition, and really took the time to discuss potential motivations and meanings with us.

A New York diner in Brum?

For dinner that evening, we walked down to Isaacs, a (very elevated) New York-style diner situated underneath the Grand Hotel, close to the cathedral. This restaurant has very mixed reviews on TripAdvisor, which I hadn’t checked in advance, but we found the staff super friendly and welcoming, and didn’t encounter any of the issues others noted. 

Walking in Birmingham

The next morning we headed back to the Cathedral for a walking tour led by passionate Brummie, Dee. I’ve been getting very into guided tours lately, and this one didn’t disappoint. As we took a ninety-minute amble through the city centre, Dee talked us through the history of the city via the sights we passed. Last year, I wrote an essay about Charles Dickens performances of A Christmas Carol, which he did for the first time at Birmingham Town Hall in 1853, so it was nice to see the town hall in person! Overall, having someone who clearly loved her city, warts and all, really made this tour for me. 

These three pictures are from Chamberlain Square, where a statue of the political campaigner Sir Thomas Attwood has toddled off of his plinth for a sit on the steps.

The Jewellery Quarter

After saying goodbye to Dee, we walked to Warstone Lane Cemetery to begin our exploration of the Jewellery Quarter. I really wish we’d taken public transport because we were flagging from all the walking. The cemetery is home to a small double tier of catacombs – I’m not sure if I’d seen catacombs before, so that was a new experience. Warstone is also home to a few ghosts, although they weren’t out and about during our visit. 

The Jewellery Quarter definitely needs a more in depth visit at some point, because we barely scratched the surface. After peering through the windows of some jewellery shops, we wandered down to RBSA Gallery where we accidentally gate-crashed a Private View, before heading across the road to St Paul’s Church to admire the stained-glass window. 

Continuing the jewellery theme with a hidden gem (sorry)

Later that evening we grabbed an Uber down to Indian Café Racer, a complete hidden gem of a restaurant located at the back of the Duke of Wellington pub on the corner or Bristol Street and Bromsgrove Street. Between the roadworks standing in our way, and the old-fashioned looking pub, I was worried. I absolutely did not need to be. The food was incredible – a mixture of tapas style dishes and larger plates from across India. My favourite was the dahi puri – puffed shells of potato, yoghurt, tamarind and mint chutney – which the waiter helpfully explained we should eat in one bite. It’s currently the top-rated restaurant in Birmingham on TripAdvisor, and deservedly so.

Sidetracked by the Lionesses

When I said that we weren’t the target market for Broad Street, I lied slightly. Our final morning in Brum coincided with the Women’s World Cup Final, so we decided to see if we could find a bar where we could cheer on the Lionesses. There wasn’t a big screen set up anywhere, and I twas disappointingly hard to find out where it was being shown, but Broad Street certainly doesn’t lack for bars, so we hoped to find an unreserved table at one of them. We didn’t have to walk far, because Velvet Music Rooms, under our hotel was open and ready to go. While the result wasn’t what we’d hoped for, it was nice to watch the match with other fans, and I was also really pleasantly surprised to see quite a few men turn up to watch on their own as they would a men’s match. 

This statue is called The Golden Boys (aka Boulton, Watt and Murdoch) – these men revolutionised the steam engine, driving the industrial revolution. The statue has a plaque explaining the links these men had to the transatlantic slave trade, which is also something Dee talked about when we passed it on our tour. I have mixed feelings about the continued display of this kind of statue, but in this case, I think this is probably quite a pragmatic approach given the importance of the industrial revolution to Birmingham’s history. I’d be interested to hear other peoples opinions in the comments.

Was Birmingham bostin’?

So, Birmingham… Was is bostin’? Yes! Would I go back? Also yes! There are quite a few things which were on my list but which we didn’t make it to, so next time around I have my sights set on the following: 

• Pen Museum
• Coffin Works
• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
  Currently closed for maintenance, but due to reopen in 2024 – I’m not sure if this will be delayed due to the city council’s bankruptcy notice.
• The Library
  I love a library anyway, but one with amazing architecture, a café, a gift shop and two outdoor terraces… be still my beating heart!
• Back to Backs
  A National Trust property available to visit only by guided tour which shows the lives of people in a row of small houses from the 1840s to the 1970s. Tickets are released every Thursday, which I misunderstood as being for the following week, rather than several weeks in advance, so we missed out on this trip (you can see the National Trust properties I have made it to this year here).