Birmingham Council House

Greetings to everyone from Birmingham, England!

Charley and I have been on the road for just over two weeks now, and it’s worth checking in to talk about how things are going.

We found a great shortstay apartment here in Birmingham by the name of City Nites, and having a whole apartment to ourselves (which we should call a “flat” while we’re in England) has given us some nice benefits.

The first is that we can have a few nights staying in. Travel is already exhausting; if we treat this trip like a whirlwind where we need to spend every day spending as much time running around and doing activities, we’re going to die of exhaustion halfway through. We’ve spend two or three casual nights in our apartment here, catching up on emails, working on the blog, and watching British reality TV. It’s been relaxing and wonderful, and a nice reminder that sometimes the best joys involve a glass of wine and watching Simon Cowell be mean to people.

The second is that we can finally put into practice one of our best tips for saving money while traveling: we can cook for ourselves. Hitting up the grocery stores to get some bread and meat/cheese has given us our dinners for our nights in, at a small fraction the price of what it would cost to eat out. Eating out is a lot cheaper at lunchtime!

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We had originally planned to leave Birmingham today and spend the weekend seeing Cardiff, Wales. Once we got here, though, we found out that Birmingham’s gay pride parade is tomorrow the 28th, and we couldn’t possibly be so close to it and not stop by to say hello. We’ll let you know how it goes!