This week my Word of the Week is:
This week has been all about getting back to normal after being under the weather last week with a cold but to be honest I was just going through the motions waiting for Thursday to arrive when my day was not a normal day. I went on a bit of an adventure to Birmingham! I did think of Anne and Joleisa when I was sat on the bus, knowing it's their city!
My dad's partner and I hopped on a bus, not literally as we had booked it as a coach trip to visit the biggest Primark Store in the world. It holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest fashion retail store. Spanning five floors and approximately 160,000 square feet, it’s like Primark on steroids. It’s also not just clothes and homeware either. Inside there’s a Disney cafe, a beauty studio, a barbershop and even a vintage clothes shop. You could spend a whole day in there and still not see everything, we totally missed the vintage clothes.
Before we booked the coach we looked at the train prices and wow, I am glad we did. A train would have cost us at least £70 each and taken nearly three hours, plus the faff of changing trains and fighting to get a seat. The coach cost us £21 each, with reserved seats and took about two and a half hours. Bargain! It was way less stressful too, we got to sit back, relax and let someone else do the driving. The coach itself was lovely and the driver was brilliant, so cheerful and helpful. The only rookie mistake we made was not packing any food for the journey. Everyone else on the coach seemed to have thought of that. At one point I spotted a couple of women sat there with croissants and cans of wine and it wasn’t even 10am yet. They were clearly living their best life while I sat there wishing I’d at least brought a packet of crisps!
It took two and a half hours for us to arrive in Birmingham but it was totally worth it! We got dropped off right outside Primark and headed straight in! I had seen photos and videos of the store before but nothing really prepares you for just how big it feels when you’re standing in it. It’s overwhelming in the best way. We had a bit of a plan, head straight to the top floor, check out the Disney cafe and then work our way down floor by floor. We could have eaten anywhere in the city centre but we had heard so much about the Disney Cafe. It was so cute and the banoffee milkshake and the hot dog I had tasted good, so were the tater tots, how American!
One of the best things about that Primark is the baskets. You get options of either the usual bag you carry or one of those pull along baskets on wheels. I went straight for the pull along one and thank goodness I did. We started off in the Home section and I could feel my arms getting tired just looking at all the candles, mugs and Christmas decorations. I resetrained myself. I could have spent a lot more than I did. We spent about the next three hours browsing and putting things in our baskets.
My favourite buys were the candles because can you ever have too many, a Christmas mug and The Sims Nightdress!
I also bought some things for Stu and the girls but the they will have to wait until Christmas to get their treats. I spent a lot less than I thought I would. I think I was just so overwhelmed by it all that I didn’t want to make too many snap decisions. I’ve already decided that I need to go back with the girls though, they’ll absolutely love it. I’ve told them to start saving now because once they see everything they’ll want to buy half the shop.
By the time we had finished in Primark it was close to 3pm. We went outside to get some fresh air and of course stopped to get the classic photo with Birmingham’s famous bull.
We also had a quick wander around the market stalls outside. The food stalls were incredible, they had pretty much every type of food you could think of, including corn dogs! I don’t think I’ve ever seen corn dogs for sale in real life before so that was a bit of a novelty. I regret not getting one.
We headed back onto the coach at around 4pm and were back in Scunthorpe by about 7pm after hitting some traffic. It made for a long day but such a good one. For me it wasn’t even really about the shopping even thought it was fun, it was more about the experience of going somewhere different, seeing Birmingham and having a proper day out. It definitely brightened up my week and gave me something to look forward to after feeling a bit rough.
How has your week been? I hope you have had a good one! I am of course linking up with Anne who blogs at Raisie Bay for her Word of the Week linky!
What a fun outing! That store sounds really cool! In NYC, the Macy's there says it's the world's largest Macy's. I never went into it but was curious as to what a huge store would look like. We don't have Primark's here but I had heard of them through my British novels :). Your food at the cafe looks so good. Probably the only good thing about not having food on the bus was that you were really hungry once you got to the cafe!
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