This weekend myself and Charlie headed up north (it’s north to us, anyway) to Birmingham. After being invited to the Travelodge or ‘Bloggerlodge’ to have a weekend mooching around the Christmas markets we packed our backpacks and headed up for a couple of days. We’re actually only an hour and a half drive to Birmingham, I didn’t realise it was such a short journey so we were there in no time!

Our first stop once we had dropped our bags off was FOOD. I was staving as we didn’t each breakfasts so not to spoil a nice lunch. We got there about midday and almost all restaurants already had crazy queues but we managed to nab a table at the Handmade burger company. Oh my, these were good burgers. I’ve never eaten there before but I couldn’t believe how many veggie burgers there were to choose from. Normally we get one at a stretch but I was deliberating over the menu for ages, I don’t know how meat eaters cope with so much choice. In the end I had the mushroom stack and it was divine and the chips were just as heavenly.

Next we took a stroll around the bullring, it’s pretty damn good for shopping with Selfridges, COS, Whistles, Reiss, Topshop all under one roof. We also visited the new Grand Central where there was a John Lewis and I picked up a cute sausage dog decoration for the Christmas tree!

Then it was time for the Christmas markets, and man these were BUSY! Very pretty, very cute but very busy. The atmosphere was buzzing though, I just couldn’t believe how many people were there. We grabbed a couple of hot chocolates and had a stroll around the wooden chalets selling lots of handmade crafts, gifts, sweets and food.

Then we headed to the movies to get out of the crowds for a little while and caught a showing of the last Hunger Games (which by the way I thought was great apart from the final 45 mins when it went really strange, do you agree?).

We headed out for dinner around 8ish, although we had a bit of a disaster as my order didn’t get put through so I waited over an hour for a margarita pizza but hey at least my amazing burger at lunch made up for it!

Our stay was courtesy of Travelodge Birmingham, we stayed at the Moor Street hotel which was just a stones throw away from all the shops. A really great location, comfy kingsize bed and extremely clean. I couldn’t fault it!

Want to know more about Birmingham? Planning a trip?