We went to Birmingham (don't laugh!)
It was just a few days, but there is so much there, we will have to go again.
Museums are always a must see. The main one would take a full day to see properly. Fortunately it has a great restaurant to fill the hunger gap. A local lad Matthew Boulton, made steel buttons that 'shone like diamonds' and 'impressed the ladies'. At one time it was an offence to wear cloth-covered buttons, to do so risked a fine and said buttons removed!
There was an unprepossessing building with dusty windows and a battered door just up the hill, which housed the pen museum. Easy to miss, but please visit it - it was fascinating. Pen nib making was woman's work (cheap labour, but then it was realised they were also more skillful) so I was shown how to use the presses and made 3 nibs to bring home. Took me right back to junior school.
The NT look after a row of back-to-backs in the China town area and a guided tour is highly recommended. A salutary lesson of less affluent times. The last tenant moved out in the late 60's.
We walked around the Bullring, the cloth market and down to the canal. New buildings and old, all mixed together.
We missed the coffin museum, can you imagine? What a city!
Loved it.
Photographed it.
(Well, there will be photos when I have worked out how to import them...... In the mean time, do you know who/what is Oozells? There is a bridge and I wondered, is it a bird, a flock of which nested there? Or the chap who built it? Or bashed in to it with his boat? Or fell of it after a night's merriment in a local hostelry?
Any ideas?)
P.s. Yes, have had a lesson and now have acquired import/export expertise!
