don juan's reckless daughter: reckless daughter takes on Birmingham

Onward to Birmingham...

Please note the ungodly hour of our train's departure. And the beautiful misty countryside out the train window which put me in a better mood.

Again, I didn't know what to expect from this city either but we had two days to explore which was nice. Here are a few places we went while we were there...

The Mailbox - an upscale shopping center which is also home to several restaurants. This was very near our hotel so we ended up going there a couple of times. We ate at Cafe Rouge - actually, a chain of french cafes, but still very good.

Plus it has a beautiful view...

Back towards the center of town is the famous Bull Ring shopping mall (the silver spaceship-like building in the photo below). To be honest, I didn't go in but a few of our tour-mates went and liked it. It just seemed very Americanized to me...they even had a Forever 21! Still the building is impressive.

We knew of some vintage stores down toward an area called The Custard Factory. One of which was the sister store of one we visited in Manchester - COW (82 Digbeth, Birmingham) It is a very large warehouse sized store and it had some really great dresses plus a huge menswear section which made "The Brit" happy.

We wandered further down the block to the Custard Factory which is an artsy quarter located at the former site of an actual Bird's Custard Factory. We were there on a Sunday so many of the shops and restaurants were shut but it was still a very unique area to walk around. Definitely worth a look.

Oh and here's a beautiful Church in the city center on the way back to our hotel.

One night we had dinner with the Secret Sisters and company at a delicious Indian restaurant called Maharaja (23-25 Hurst St) which was very near our hotel and also very near the venue we played.