Day 18 - Manchester to Birmingham

A relatively quiet day was planned for us. John’s blackberry has decided to no longer communicate with us.
Long story - solved when we got home. Thanks Bell for not using messaging or email to advise us of the problem. Very proactive, though sending a snail mail letter to our house to find when we finally get home 6 days later.

Woke to pouring rain and a blocked toilet, talk about a crappy day!!. Reported it to the desk and headed out for breakfast. The place we had scooped out last night wasn’t open so we found a pub which served breakfast.

Got back to the hotel and toilet hadn’t been attended to. I headed to the desk and played the card that they advertised 15 minutes to fix a problem or your room is free. So I got our room free.

Got the car loaded up and headed for Birmingham. It rained all the way and we ran into traffic outside of Birmingham.

Love this picture I captured from car!

 But we finally dropped the car off and dragged our suitcases over to the terminal as Birmingham airport does not have any shuttles from the car rentals. Grabbed a cab and were back at the Ibis around 1:30.

Still raining with a colourless sky above us so we went up to the Yard of Ale behind the Bull Ring for a quick burger. As we came out the sun was breaking through so we started walking around and then saw the signposts for the Mailbox as being only 260 yards away. Since I had only ever gotten there by cab I was stunned that it was so close.

By now the sun is shining in a bright blue sky with white fluffy clouds so we were able to stroll along the canal and take photos. We walked further than I had even been.

We stopped for a pint at The Malt House.

Then we strolled back to the hotel debating where we would have dinner if we didn’t hear from Tanya.

We decided on trying the Chinese across the street after we had relaxed and read our books for a while.

But once we were in our rooms, and I checked that we had hot water, we had a message from Tanya which we returned. She said they were at the Arcadian. So we went over to meet them and have a drink.

Picture taken as we snuck up on them!

Then we grabbed a cab (no idea why as it is an easy walk) and went to Wagamama’s as Tanya loves this place. We all had chicken curry and it was delicious.

http://birmingham.myvillage.com/place/wagamama-digbeth-birmingham


Once satiated we went back to the Arcadian in the pouring rain for a nightcap.

Yes, a very quiet day for us relatively speaking.