A Kiwi in Birmingham

1-2 June

Tough (Matt) was over in the UK the past month to travel, catch up with family and among other things, compete in the GKR World Champs 2007!! I figure that was more than enough reason to take an overnight trip to Birmingham to catch up.

Completely shattered from sleeping at the airport and with Mick's flight arriving in at 6am we were stoked to make our 9:30am bus up. After wandering around the centre of the city for a bit (one wrong turn right at the start can completely screw you up...) we finally wandered into the middle of town and found the train station and straight out to Cadbury Land. A little bit different than I'd expected - my tour of Dunedin's Cadbury Land with Campbell had been more of a factory whereas this was just fun for kids, but there was still plenty of free chocolate to keep me happy!!

After staying in a pretty nice hostel not far from the city centre and taking full advantage of the free breakfast we started out pretty early to make it in time to the National Indoor Arena when the GKR Karate World Cup was being held. The opening ceremony was amazing, there were competitiors of all ages from NZ, AUS, USA and the UK and it was so inspirational to see everyone representing their country! Finally found Tough in the crowd (the orange hair doesnt stand out so much when its short!) but had a great time chatting to him for a couple of hours and catching up on each others lives. Turns out he wasnt competing until Sunday (huge bummer coz our bus was heading back on Sat night) but at least we got to catch up!

Had a pretty chilled afternoon after leaving the NIA, it was a beautiful day outside so we wandered back into town for a bit - there are some pretty nice buildings and public areas dotted around Birmingham : )

Being girls on holiday we decided to splurge and have Pizza Hut for lunch (dont think Ive had it since Ive been in the UK!) so we went all out and got this fancy one where the crust was turned into little cheesy rolls and came with a tangy dipping sauce - yummy! Of course after all that food we had to walk it off by checking out the shops (I didnt buy too much... but there were some pretty good bargains around) before catching out bus back to London at 6pm. Great to get away for little trips like this and it was awesome to catch up with Tough : )