Fun days out at Rugby and Birmingham

As I sat down to write this, it started raining ! It has been very cold outside all day...in fact the wind made it freezing. And suddenly, a few minutes ago it was raining !

It's been a wonderful three days. 

On the 8th, we decided to venture out on our own to the Rugby Town Centre or High Street as they call it here. The bus stop is about 2 minutes walking distance away from C&S's home. 

Its an interesting system here. There's no conductor. Only the driver. You get into the bus from the front. You tell the driver where you want to go, pay the fare he tells you, take the ticket that rolls out of a small machine next to the driver and go take a seat. About a stop before you want to get off, you have to press a red button that is present on alternate bars in the bus. The driver gets an intimation and stops at your stop and you get off. So we took the bus to the town centre and despite being a weekday, there were quite a few people about. 

There is a closed market (something like a mall back home). The one in Rugby town centre is called The Clock Towers Market. Outside the market on a couple of adjoining streets, there are more shops, restaurants and pubs. (C explained to me that here, generally, a pub means a place where they'll serve food and beer and a couple of other drinks and a club means a place where there is dancing.)

Since we reached around lunch time, we decided to walk about just a little bit then to go to a pub, have food and then explore the rest. Here's the street view.

We ate at the pub called The Lawrence Sheriff. The atmosphere was interesting....relaxed and friendly and the crowd was mixed...parents with toddlers, old men, young men, couples - young and old. This is how it looked on the inside.

This is me holding the menu.

We walked around exploring ALL the shops in great detail. I'm amazed at TH. He usually hates window shopping but that day he lasted a couple of hours....and without once complaining. In fact, he was window shopping quite enthusiastically.

Since the market is called The Clock Towers, they have put up all sorts of interesting clocks all over the market. Their main clock is a very interesting old metallic one and I'm told that at a particular time there's a hare and a tortoise running around the dial. On one clock the numbers are all placed as if they are falling off and in another they are all bunched up together and another one is very ornate. Here are some photographs.

In the evening, around 5, as we started back, the sky was wonderful and we spotted a beautiful looking tree outside a church. Here it is.

On the next day, 9th April, we decided to take it easy and chill at home. Here the weather is so cold that when you are at home, you feel so lazy that you just don't want to move at all. So we watched a movie highly recommended by S. It is a French movie called "Micmacs A Tire-Larigot". It is sooooo funny that TH and I were laughing out loud almost through the entire movie. Later we found out that the director has previously directed Amelie.

Yesterday, 10th April, we decided to go to Birmingham. We thought we'll look at the Bull Ring mall for a couple of hours, have lunch there and then go to the museum. So, we took the morning train to Birmingham which is about 30 minutes away. The train station Birmingham New Street is right inside the mall ! So as soon as we got off the train, our window shopping began. But we didn't want to spend too much time indoors right away. So we decided to step out for a bit. Here's our first view of Birmingham.

We walked a bit on this street and turned to the right and walked to this intersection where there were these three tall towers. To the right there was the Bull...of the Bull Ring mall. Also, there was this man selling balloons of all different designs...you can only see his legs amidst all those balloons. Check out the photographs.

Further ahead we could see St. Martin's Church. With your back to the church, you see Admiral Lord Nelson's statue.

Facing the church, on our left we saw this part of the building with an interesting exterior.

There are steps designed like piano keys where the TH stood while taking the photograph above.

The inside of the mall is super huge !

In one part they have built a life-sized bull made completely out of jelly beans. Also, there was one stall that sold only jelly beans and there were at least 50 varieties of them...really, no exaggeration...50 flavours of jelly beans !

When you walk out of the mall on one side, there's a Christmas tree like tree made of tin.

Further ahead you see the farmer's / vegetable market. 

In this particular market the sellers were predominantly Asian and Middle Eastern. One particular seller was the best of them all, I thought. Other people were shouting out to customers, "Fresh raspberries, 2 pounds for 1.50" or some such thing. This chap was actually singing...he had a specific tune and he'd sing it out loud ! TH and stood by his stall for a while and TH quickly did a voice recording on his cell of this chap singing out to customers :)

The highlight of this trip to Birmingham was the food we ate :) We had the most delicious Krispy Kreme doughnut...Lemon Meringue. There were so many different flavours that I'd be eating doughnuts for each meal in one day before I tried them all. But, THE most fun experience and THE most tasty food was Yo Sushi !

Here's the system. The chefs stand on the inside of a large table that has a conveyor belt running on it and make sushi at the centre. Customers sit on the outside of this table on wooden bar stools. After every couple of customers, tissues, chopsticks and spoons and a couple of sauces are kept. Also there are orange buttons placed after every couple of customers. If you need any help, press the button and a server will come to you. So, when you enter, they seat you at a couple of stools and ask if you have come there before. Then the server explains the system to you. The conveyor belt keeps moving all the time. Different coloured bowls containing a variety of sushi pass on the belt. The colour codes are price codes. You are given a menu in your hand. So you look in the menu and at the conveyor belt and identify the item in the bowl passing along. If you want to eat it, you lift it off the belt and eat out of it. So on so forth. After you are done eating, you press the orange button, the server comes and counts the bowls and their colours and gives you a chit. You take it to the counter. There the cashier tells you your bill amount and you pay it up and leave.

We had so much fun there ! The food was YUM ... thankfully both TH and I love sushi...not everybody in India does. We loved the whole system too. All in all it was a great experience.

By the end of the day at Birmingham both of us were very tired but quite pleased :)

Today, 11th April, we spent the day at home, generally lazing around with just a short walk to the nearby Tesco Express. Tomorrow too will be a day at home mostly. 

On Saturday we plan to go to London with S's parents. I'm sooooo excited to go to London ! So the next update will be on Sunday or Monday, most likely.

Au revoir :)