A Year Abroad: Day One. Birmingham.

Today was the first day of my solo journey. I flew into Birmingham, England, at midday and made my way to the hostel. It's a nice place, the average age is a bit older than the places I stayed at in Spain and Portugal, and it's not as crazy. Birmingham, the city, is like London, but smaller, less busy and less people. There's still a lot of shopping here though. And it has the charm of a country town.

For dad: I saw the old BSA factory coming in on the train from the airport!

I started off grabbing a map and hot chocolate (yeah for 24hr free stuff from the hostel) and circled things I wanted to see. I'd had a brief chat with the customs guy about what Birmingham had to offer. He'd mainly talked about The Lord of the Rings and how it was written here. There's a tower not far away, Perrot's Folly, that apparently influenced the setting. I looked at going, but it was just a bit too far out of town for the afternoon.

I started off walking to the Chamberlain Clock, from 1903 in memory of a former MP. Then continued onto the Warstone Lane cemetery, from 1847. There are two tiers of catacombs there which is cool and is also reportedly haunted. It was a pretty lovely cemetery!

I then walked back to St. Paul's square/church, which is near the hostel, and went inside. It's not as impressive as St. Paul's in London, but the park around is really nice.

I passed Birmingham cathedral so decided to go in and check it out. I spent some time just sitting in there, it was very pretty.

Most of the afternoon was spent walking around the market area of Birmingham (the bullring, pavilions, bullring markets and wholesale markets). I picked up some groceries at a Tesco on the Main Street, then headed home for some salad! Yum! One of the things I love about hosteling is being able to cook your own food. Some of the kitchens are small or dirty, but most are fine, and when you get a decent one, it's game on! This one was pretty good, big and clean. You've just got to learn to pick the best time to use it if you're going to be using more than one hot plate. I was hard boiling eggs and cooking chicken, so I cooked a bit earlier than the time I thought would be most people's regular dinner time. I had met an older couple (65 give or take a few years) who had checked in at the same time as me, so we sat together in the dining room. They're from NZ, but originally the wife was from the UK, and they're back just visiting family and friends for a few weeks. It's always cool to see older people staying in hostels.

After dinner I headed back out for a stroll and ended up in St. Paul's church gardens drinking sweet tea and reading.

It's strange travelling on your own. It's weird to think that I'm in Europe alone. At the beginning of the year, I said I'd never travel alone. I've only been doing it for one day so far, but it's pretty cool. You just need to be able to occupy yourself. I spent a bit of the afternoon in the kitchen, cooking. It was full of guys when I walked in there, but no one was using the hot plates. It was all microwave or oven. Ahh guys in hostels and their dietary habits.