Silly Polar Bear

On Sunday we went to Birmingham, it being conveniently placed halfway beer web Bristol and home. We met up with Jocasta, who has just moved there from Edinburgh. Feeling I've never done the city justice, having only passed through it on a handful of occasions, we felt we would drop in.

Having had a rather heavy night in Bristol the night before, aided by a flat tyre on Wolfie's car, we were slightly late and didn't rock up until 2pm. Parking at the hospital was a pain as there were many staff only car parks but we did manage to find a spot, meet up with Jocasta and head into the city centre from University station, situated in front of the impressively gothic university building.

We opted to grab some food first at a grassy spoon cafe just under the Bullring, needing up save money. There really isn't enough greasy spoonery in the UK any more, old style cafes at least, so it was great to get snausage egg chips and beans, with a cup of tea, for a very low price.

One of our main aims in Birmingham was to continue our BrewDog tour, visiting bar number eight, which we did in a beautiful street just behind New Street Station. By this point I had tried all BrewDog had to offer so I moved on to the guest beers, suggesting things to try for Jocasta. We sat downstairs in an imperial armchair section of the bar and everything was so comfy we opted to stay quite a whole rather than move on to a whisky bar we had been aiming to go to.

Wolfie wasn't drinking either, due to driving, so a pub crawl would have been unfair on him. Instead, we opted to go to the Christmas markets which were identical to those in Leeds, with the same wooden shops and even the same brands in places, only bigger. I love Christmas markets but there is a perverse logic of putting a big wooden hut in the middle of a main thoroughfare at the busiest time of the year. Everything was rammed so we didn't stay long, although we did get chance to buy some hugging doggy salt and pepper shakers and see a hot chocolate stand in a polar bear's mouth.

Wit time pressing on, we sadly had to leave after this, but it was great walking around the city, even though it's home to some truly ugly buildings. The town hall is impressive though, a perfect setting for the Christmas market, and we do hope to return again sometime. The journey back was pretty smooth so it is possible although we were fuelled by Costa Coffee's Festive menu (which for some reason they don't sell in January and February). As I don't like coffee - I tried Wolfie's Gingerbread Latte and had this confirmed once again - I had a Black Forest Hot Chocolate, which truly was scrumptious, like liquid cake. Delicious indeed!