I want a penguin!

It has taken me a week to finally sit down and write this post (I have my reasons...I promise), but last Friday I went on a spontaneous trip to the exotic city of Birmingham (please try and contain your excitement). Jokes aside it was actually a really nice day. I went to visit my friend Mel who I hadn't seen since Februrary. We met at University and I hardly get to see her anymore *bad times* so when she asked if I wanted to meet up how could I say no?

We didn't really make any plans, we thought we would just see where the mood took us. When I arrived I met her in the Bull Ring (for those of you that don't know the Bull Ring, it is Birmingham's main shopping centre and it's pretty good - not quite as good as the Trafford Centre or Liverpool One, but I am a bit bias towards them because they are my main go-to places if my town centre isn't doing it for me). We first grabbed some lunch from Urban Pie; a little cafe that sells pies (shocker) with every filling imaginable. It was my sister who recommended this place from when she lived in Brummy for a short while and I am so glad I listened to her. I had a steak and mushroom pie with mash and gravy. It was literally one of the best pies I have ever had and being a typical northerner i do love my pies :) We were sat there for a good while having a good ole chin wag, until it got really busy and we felt guilty for hogging a table, so we moved on.

We decided we were going to go to the National Sea Life Centre and see all the fishies, but neither of us knew how to get there. So, we got out our maps on our phones and had a little adventure. It probably took us twice as long as it should have and we took a couple of wrong turns, but we actually had fun doing it (is it just me who loves getting lost?) We walked through parts of Birmingham that I had never seen before and some of the places we passed were really nice so I thought I would take some pics.

Any ideas what this is?

So pretty <3

Trying to find our way...HELP!

The Sea Life Centre was probably the best one I have been to. They had penguins!! Need I say more? I love it when they make the effort with the decor so that every room looks like the part of the world where those specifics fish are from, and that's what they did, it was really cool. I could have sworn the penguin section was a bit colder then everywhere else, but that could have just been my mind playing tricks on me. They had cute little turtles, really cool jellyfish and a tunnel where the sharks and a massive tortoise swam over the top of us (the tunnels are always my favourite part). We also listened to a short talk about the otters and watched them being fed. The otters would stand on their hind legs reaching up towards the food waiting for the man to give it to them. It was so cute.

Thought they looked really cool with bright colours

Jus' chillin'

Hey! Hey look at me! Hey!

We found it a lot easier to find our way back to the Bull Ring and we had our tea in Browns. I love this restaurant. Mel and I discovered it last time I was in Birmingham and I tried king prawn and crab linguine for the first time. I'm not normally a big fish lover (quite ironic with this post HA), but it has become one of my favourite dishes and I had in my mind that was what I was going to choose but there are so many nice things on the menu I just had to try something else. We went for their finger food selection to share where you can pick a few different things. I can't remember all the different sauces they were in but we had duck, fried king prawn, chicken, fish pie and hummus...and cocktails of course. It was all delicious! I really need to try out the Browns in Liverpool.

All in all 'twas a good day :)

xxxx