Christmas in Birmingham

We headed out to another short break over the Christmas holidays! This one much closer to London... Birmingham!!

We went after Christmas Day but although Santa was understandably nowhere to be seen, Christmas was still in the air!

We stayed in the City Centre do it was easier for us to get to our various places and there were a few! So here’s our list of what to do when in Birmingham!

1. Cadbury World (obviously!) - Bournville is such a cute little village and I didn’t know it was built by the Cadbury Family for their employees! How thoughtful! I only got to know about this when we were invited to the cinema to learn about the factory’s history! We booked tickets in advance and had to pick a slot! Before we even when I’m to our childcare te adventure, we were handed big handful of chocolates (reminder for next time: take a bag to carry all the chocolates that will be handed to you!). Once we entered, we traced the history of chocolate while doing a trail before we arrived at the cinema to learn about chocolate! We got to see different sides of the factory including where they decorate chocolates! You could get your own personalised chocolate which we did! There was also an  exhibit of all the Cadbury ads over the year including the drumming Gorilla! We didn’t go on the ride or the 4d cinema as the queue were so long so instead the kids let loose in the huge playgrounds! There was more to look around, the other side of the factory, but the kids wanted to play rather than do more looking around!  The shop had all sorts of  confectionary and was really hard to choose one thing each!

What’s another best place for kids in Birmingham?! The Lego discovery centre obviously! It was a good 30mins walk but with all the lights around to look at, it didn’t feel like it! The centre had a handful of rides,  4d cinema and of course lots of Lego’s and places to build! My Lego mad son was obviously in Lego heaven and the shop had a very good selection of toys!

As a family who loves history we had to fit in the Blists Hill Victorian Town which was just outside Birmingham, in Telford. It is an open air museum recreating the period between late 1800s to mid 1950s! First of all, we knew we were going to spend a few pounds so off we headed to the bank to convert our monies into older time monies. The kids stared at the coins in wonderment and trying to remember the values of each coins! Before we explored the village, we saw a little theatre show and make an own candles (at extra cost). We walked around the museum, sipping on and out of vintage shops and everyone was in character which added so much charm and authenticity to it! Everything was from back-in-the-days so the kids loved trying to figure out how to play some games, what some medicines were for and what confectionery there is! We even had some warm homemade bread! We also went inside a mine cave or a little train to hear mini stories (of kids included) which the kids were sad about! There was so much education and bff u not be had, before we knew it we spent a good 4/5hours there! The highlight was the cliff lift which we hopped on quite a few times!

The next and final day, we went to the Snowdome’s Winter Wonderland which was 30mins by car. Again this has to be prebooked and once we are done with that, you can have fun on the toboggan or sledging on the big snow slopes! So off we went to the indoor Winter Wonderland where we were greeted by the Snow King and entertained us while we waited for our time slot! Once, we were in, it was truly winter wonderland with snow everywhere! I took a sledge and pushed the kids everywhere which involved lots of falling and laughter! There were tiny slopes for us to go down and a ice sling ring (needs to be booked separately). We also saw a Christmas show which was funny and still keeping the Christmas spirit alive! Once we finished with all the toboggan and sledging, we went to visit the winter animals which included reindeers! Before we headed out, we wrote to Santa and left to go tobogganing on much bigger slopes! The kids looked so little carrying their toboggans up the big slope! They laughter was so infectious that I wanted to go and have fun too but unfortunately that was for kids only so I was watching them from the cafe with my warm food and hot chocolate! The kids didn’t want to leave so had to physically drag them out of the slopes!

With that, our trip to Birmingham has come to an end and we had a brilliant festive time!