Being old retired people we don’t like getting up to early so as we had an early flight we booked to stay in a hotel next to Birmingham airport. We then thought why not spend the day in Birmingham so on Friday afternoon we had a mooch round the centre of Brum.
We had not visited the cathedral on our previous visits, it was a pleasant surprise. Before the industrial revolution Birmingham was a small town and had small churches the most prominent of which was St Phillips Parish Church built in 1715 on land donated by Robert Phillips so you could say the church was named after him!
When Birmingham grew and was made a city the church was upgraded to cathedral status but the first bishop, Charles Gore, did not want any money spent on upgrading the church while the poor in the city were more needy. Shame the Church has not had more people like him. The cathedral does have some very good stained glass windows made by a friend of William Morris.
Just down the road was a monument to a famous Brummie – Tony Hancock.
We also visited an art gallery which had three Bob Dylan paintings for sale at £35k a time. I am a fan of Bob and have many of his records but I did not know he could paint. All three pictures were quite good and I would happily have them on my wall if I happen to have £35k to spare.
The real reason to visit Birmingham was to have a meal in a Polish restaurant we discovered 7 years ago. It was close to the hotel we were staying at the time in but it took some finding, it is in the scruffiest building in the city and was only the high ratings in Trip Advisor which pushed us through the door.
It is now surrounded by HS2 building work so looks even worse. It is under the Polish Centre, a nasty 1960s building in need of some work.
Inside it is like a bad 1960’s bistro, the only thing missing are Mateus Rose wine bottles for candle holders. The food is “robust” huge slabs of meat, piles of potatoes and cabbage.
On our first visit they had a huge vat of dripping from which you helped yourself as an appetiser but covid restrictions have stopped that.
Despite quite a few trips to Poland I can’t say I am very knowledgable about Polish cuisine but if you are in the centre of Birmingham the Karczma restaurant is worth visiting but you do need a good map to find it and an appetite when you do.
After all that food the airline should have weighed us rather than our bags. By Saturday lunchtime we were sitting in a cafe overlooking Cavtat harbour (picture at the top of the page).
It seems to be a smashing and very quiet little town which is about 20 miles south of Dubrovnik which we might visit tomorrow. Stand by for pictures of city walls and lots of tourists.