First day in the UK!

I’m not much a flyer but honestly the flights were not bad at all.  In fact, I would say that the flight over the ocean was really enjoyable! 

Birmingham is great and Paula, Rick and Mary are all great too, we got into Birmingham at 7:30 AM (1:30 AM Central time).  Stuart, Paul, and Luke were all waiting for us.  We relaxed a little bit at the airport with coffee and soda.  Then we were off.  The first thing I noticed was the smell.  Birmingham ha a nice moist smell which is a nice change up from Missouri right now!  There was a loud cloud cover but you could tell that it would clear up soon and sure enough it was bright and sunny the rest of the day.  According to everyone we met it was unusually warm for this time of year so I was comfortable in a light jacket.

After watching Mary get into the “wrong” side of Luke’s car, Luke, Mary, and I were headed towards the city center with Stuart, Paul, Paula, and Dr. Toomey in the other vehicle.   It was interesting driving through Birmingham.  There were roundabouts everywhere and besides Luke driving on the “wrong” side of the road, Mary noticed that for such a large city there was actually not that many stop lights. The architecture was a little different.   There are old buildings right next door to new ones.  n the city center where we are staying is  a marketplace and mall (It is called the bull ring.) with a cathedral right next door. I also noticed that shingles looked different, like they were more ceramic shingles.   Everything was really pretty. 

Luke also gave us some information about the city.  Birmingham has around 1 million people with about 2 million people in the surrounding area. Birmingham is very diverse and that the white population would actually very soon become the minority but there is actually very little racial tension in most parts of the city.  That with Birmingham’s acceptance of the homosexual community, I think parts of the US could take a leaf out of Birmingham’s book.

We explored the city center for many hours.  I really can’t begin to describe what we saw but I’m going to try.  There was a lot of beautiful architecture and coffee shops.  There was a canal running through the center with boats on it that served breakfast.  We went into the symphony hall where there was services gearing up for the United Kingdom’s remembrance day.  It is kind of similar to our veterans day and Birmingham had a small parade with lots of people and solemn silence. Then Paul took us a church that had absolutely beautiful stained glass.  The church wasn’t as old as it looked but still was really pretty.

We then went to a coffee shop and I had my first taste of English food.  I had a fruit scone and cappuccino.  It was really good!  To kill some time, we went to pub to grab a pint, so then I had my first taste of British beer and it was pretty good!

Then we got into our apartments.  They are one bedroom apartments with everything you would expect in an apartment!  We all rested up before we went out to eat in the evening.

We were ready to go back 5:30 and we walked to the Mailbox.  Paul was with us with his girlfriend, Gemma (I hope I spelled that right!) and they were telling us the Mailbox used to be the royal post office.    It had some beautiful restaurants and decorations up and there was also a waterway in this part.  We went to another pub and sampled some more brew while we waited to go to supper.  We then ate at a Spanish restaurant. 

I had to keep reminding myself that we were eating at a Spanish restaurant and not Mexican.  As you would expect, there was some similarities between Spanish and Mexican, but they were very different.     It was all very good.  We then made it back to the apartment and crashed.

That’s all for now. Please excuse any grammatical errors.  I plan on going back through and fixing some! I haven’t had time to really write much and I’m still trying to adjust and catch up on sleep but please stay tuned!