BIRMINGHAM – (Oh please, it’s pronounced Buh-mean-gumm) The Grizzard family arrived in England’s second largest city on Thursday expecting an industrialized gray mass of buildings and depression. In fact, Birmingham has a beautiful downtown area, great walkways along their canals, and THE chocolate factory that inspired the creation of Mr. Willy Wonka himself!
We caught the train into Birmingham and spent the afternoon at the science museum learning more about recycling than we already knew, and we worked on our deductive reasoning in their exhibit where you catch the jewel thief. We played a bit in their miniature town set-up, and we made our own aliens suitable to live on the planets that we were given. Outside of the rain, it was tons o’ fun. We also grabbed the best Indian food we have had from the restaurant at our hotel (not the hotel restaurant, the Indian restaurant at our hotel, just to be clear). Finally, before bedtime, we flipped past a channel on the telly -- and this is especially for Sawyer’s teacher Miss Kristy and her ‘Disco Friday’ friends – watched a bit of the band that you can see on the video in the picture file.
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We woke up Friday in great anticipation of a chocolate lunch at Cadbury World. This museum/factory tour is the biggest draw in Birmingham, and there were the tons of people there to prove it. They started handing us chocolate before we even walked in the door, and we proceeded to chocolate coma our way through the whole place. We learned the story of chocolate from its beginnings among the Mayans and Aztecs, and of how Cortes brought it back to Europe along with all the Aztec treasure in the 1500s. The mixture found its way to England and the shop of Mr. Cadbury right there in Birmingham, and then he added some milk to it, and before you know it, you got the best chocolate in the world. They also did an amazing job of treating their workers well and giving them nice places to live around the factory, this was all part of the Cadbury family’s Quaker tradition. Then they gave us more candy. There is a video and picture of the kids writing their names in chocolate, and then Sawyer in front of a crazy shadow machine that you have to check out. We closed the visit with – you guessed it – more chocolate…this time liquid chocolate mixed with your choice of other ingredients, but we took the safe route with marshmallows and rice krispies instead of things like sour gummy bears, yuck!
We had some more Indian food at the hotel as the rain continued, but we awoke to a sunny day for our ride home on Saturday. We got a few more pictures around the city centre and came home to rest up, because we would be heading back to Birmingham again on Monday for another taste of Mr. William Shakespeare at a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but that’s enough for now, check tomorrow for that story, including the train ride home next to the Rubik’s Cube professionals.
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