August 21 2008

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Took a trip up to Birmingham, mostly just to check out the town, shop around a bit and Phil had this great idea to go on a canal trip. Ok sure, sounds good.

Arrived at Birmingham, had a look around the shops and managed to get a pretty quick idea why the UK is given the reputation of being an expensive place to live.

Birmingham apparently has a 'beach' - or so one would assume when told "i'll take you to Birmingham beach" ... in fact it turns out, for the purpose of airline promotions, the city of Birmingham has set up a small arena in the middle of the shopping district, filled it with sand, and put down a number of deck chairs facing a large poster of the ocean. More amusing was the fact that there was a kangaroo on the poster...

We set off for the canal trip that Phil had raved about, got on the boat and the view was great to begin with. Decorated and neatly painted bridges and buildings, it all looked pretty fancy. 3 minutes into the trip however, it all suddenly went downhill. We turned the corner and the 'pretty town' view then decended to sights of rusted and dead factories, dilapidated commercial buildings, commission housing and what appeared to be homeless people.

It also became clear that our driver was reading from a script rather than actually knowing anything about the town - the fact that he was talking like a robot and that he wasn't really paying attention to where he was going (he ran into another boat), somewhat gave it away.

So overall, the trip was worth the first 3 minutes, after which, they wasted 57 minutes of my life that I'd like back.

And that be all for now 😊

Cheers!

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Photos

Birmingham Beach
Nuff said

Birmingham Canal
What consisted of the first 3 minutes

Birmingham Canal 2
After 3 minutes....

Birmingham Canal 3
Half an hour later....