Shopping and lunch.

Hi Friends and Followers.

Firstly ladies, Happy International Women’s Day.

It was our first night in Birmingham and it was lovely despite the rain later on.

Birmingham is something to behold at night.

I slept really well until I was disturbed by Keith opening the back cabin doors at 3.40 am, when enquiring as to why he had the doors open, he said “He wanted to see the lights”. All’s I wanted to do was go back to sleep, which thankfully I managed to do until around 7 am, when Marmite then decided she should cough up a fur ball. Now I should have said to myself, look out for the fur ball, but I did not so the first thing I stepped on when walking into the galley was her coughed up mess, which was cold and soggy beneath my foot. You would of thought I would have learnt by now, but clearly not.

The plan for the day was to walk into the city, do a bit of shopping and then have lunch out. Some years ago, I bought some musk perfume from The Body Shop and I used the last of it a few weeks ago and thought I would never be able to get anymore, but having spotted a Body Shop, I thought I would ask if they still did it. Not only do they still do Black Musk, they also do a White Musk as well, but it was the Black Musk I wanted. If it lasts as well as the previous bottle, my £13 will have been well spent. We bought cheese from the market and a few bits from Poundland and just wandered. Birmingham is great for wandering.

It is said that a city which has plenty of cranes above it is prosperous, so Birmingham must be doing something right, because we saw lots of large cranes towering over the city.

I love the old buildings in the city, of they could talk they would tell some story of the years past and I like to think that my ancestors walked the same street as I have done today, because a lot of my family were from Birmingham and some are actually buried in and around the city.

Just to prove I was at the Bullring today.

Selfridges beautiful building.

We had lunch at our favourite Chinese Buffet The Big Wok as always and after a fabulous lunch for £6.99 each, we walked around the city some more to walk our lunch off.

I suggested we walk back through the Mail Box, where the BBC can be found and so can these amazing statues.

I want to go back and take more photographs of these.

We walked on round to Cambrian Wharf, to the C&RT office to chat to them about moorings. As you can see the Wharf is busy as people make the most of the extended mooring times until the 31st March.

Back on the boat, Keith ran the generator for an hour and I took Paddy out for his afternoon whizz. He is not used to walking in the city as there is not much grass, but at least walking on the hard surfaces keeps his claws nice and short, it is like using an emery board on his claws walking on the pavements.

When we visited Birmingham last year at a similar time, I was quite sad at how Birmingham looked, but things look to have improved this year. There is a lot less litter on the streets, which is a good thing. Looking forward to more time looking around.