Saturday 3 August 2013
Trip report Shrewsbury (with pictures!)
Long time
no see! A lot of things have happened since my last update; some really great
stuff, and some not so great stuff. Today’s post, however, will be dedicated to
my six day trip with my fiancé to Shrewsbury.
The first
thing people have been asking me when I told them I want to Shrewsbury was “why
Shrewsbury?” Well, my fiancé has a friend who lives in the vicinity and he
really wanted to visit him. At first my fiancé wanted to go to Birmingham… As
you might remember from my Birmingham trip report, I did not like that city at
all. So I pretty much vetoed that we would not be staying there. So he asked
his friend which nice towns were near Birmingham and we settled on Shrewsbury.
My fiancés
friend, who I will refer to by his nickname Beswick from now on, promised to
pick us up at the airport when we arrived. He was such a lovely person! As many
of my readers know I am a very shy person and don’t usually say a whole lot
when I meet someone for the first time. However, Beswick is a very open and
kind person, so it didn’t take long for me to open up to him. Perhaps it was
because he greatly resembles my fiancé, characterwise… Anyway, we stopped for
some drinks and dinner, had a chat and stocked up on some much needed water and
sunscreen in a humongous supermarket. ^__^” Although they had not had a heat
wave in 7 (freaking) years, we ended up right in the middle of one. >.>
Just our luck.
After Beswick dropped us off at the Premier Inn city center hotel (he had to leave, since had an appointment), we rested a bit and then ventured to go outside…. As it was about 32 degrees celcius out there, we did not stroll around for a very long time and saw very little that day. Luckily for us, the hotel room was nice and clean and had airco! :D So no repetition of our stay in Budapest where we were forced to take cold showers and sit in front of a tiny fan ahhaha. The hotel staff was very friendly, so if I ever visit Shrewsbury again, I will most definitely stay there again!
We spent
most of our days shopping in Shrewsbury, as the town is rather small and does
not offer a great variety of things. We did plan on taking a boat ride, but you
don’t really want to be on top of the water with no wind whilst the sun is
blazing down on you…
On our
second and third day we came across three amazing shops! The first shop was a
second hand Oxfam bookstore (which apparently is a rather large chain of second
hand bookstores of which the money goes to a good cause). They had a great
variety of books there; not just Victorian novels, but also quite a range of
history books. So, obviously, I spent a fair amount of time in there. I left
with four books in total (one of which was for my mom):
The Victorians by A. N. Wilson.
The
Victorians: Britain Through the Paintings of the Age by Jeremy Paxman
The Black
Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson (it’s a 1947 edition, which looks like it has
never been touched).
Becoming
Queen by Kate Williams (this one was for my mom, as she is very interested in
the life of Queen Victoria).
These four books only cost me 12,- pounds! :D
In one of
the shopping centers we came across an alternative clothing store where I bought
he following two items:
A summer
dress! :D
In the
shopping mall the Parade I bought an adorable plastic anime fan from an anime called Shugo Chara. It really helped against the warmth! :D
And 8
bookmarks from the anime Vampire Knight… Cause you can never have too many
bookmarks :D.
(Sorry, one is missing, as I am currently using it haha).
The parade
shopping mall itself, however, is not really worth your time if you are not a
huge anime fan. So you might want to skip that if you are not into Japanese
stuff.
On our
fourth day there, which was on a Saturday, Beswick returned with two friends,
which my fiancé also knew. We had a wonderful lunch at Wetherspoons (which was
right down the street of our hotel :D) and showed them around town. They had to
leave quite early though, as the two friends had come from far and were tired, which
was a real pity. I would have loved to spend some more time with everyone.
Now then,
the fifth day was without a doubt the highlight of the trip for me. On this day
we visited Blists Hill Victorian Town. This is an open air museum completely in
Victorian style. There are a lot of volunteers working there to explain
something about the forgotten trades, such as woodcutting, printing, casting,
blacksmithing etc.
The very
kind and informative woodcutter! :D
One of the first things you will want to do when you enter the museum is to visit the Bank where you can trade your money for Victorian money. You can either decide to keep the money or to use it to pay for things within the museum. It is possible to change your money back at the end of the day. Obviously…. I kept mine :D.
You could also learn how to make candles there, but we did not do that ourselves. They also have a bakery where they sell cookies, bread and fruit cobs, which are made by hand according to Victorian recepies. I recommend that you take some ham, cheese or chocolate paste with you if you wish to try the bread as the fruit cobs by themselves are quite dry… Or you could opt to get some chocolate raisins at the candy shop; we actually tried this out and it goes quite well together.
Something you should definitely attend when you have the time is the school lesson. It is simply hilarious! Also, make sure you have trimmed your nails the day before, cause they will be inspected :P.
The somewhat scary Mr. Olsop telling us to get in a straight line before entering the classroom.
One of the things
which I really wanted to do was to get my portrait taken. You have to make a
reservation beforehand at the front of the store. When you return on the designated
time, you will be taken to the back of the store where you can chose an outfit
and a hat. Subsequently, you will be taken to the studio where you can have
your picture taken. You they will take 5 different pictures of you, one with a
Victorian “serious” face, a half-smiling face and a smiling face. One picture
will cost you 15,- pounds. Two pictures will cost you 25,- pounds. My best
picture was one of a Victorian “serious” face where I am holding a book:
:D I am
sooo happy with this picture. <3 o:p="">
During the
summer they also have a funfair where you can play a variety of games for 1
pounds or (I believe) 2 Victorian pence. I really recommend this! It is good
fun and the people there are very kind (they will sometimes give you an
additional shot at the shooting game or so).
In the gift
shop I stumbled across a book which I couldn’t leave behind: Death and
Disaster in Victorian Telford by Allan Frost… Honestly, it was meant to be :D.
So all in
all we had a wonderful stay in Shrewsbury. Perhaps it was a good thing that it
was too warm for us to do too much… I didn’t come home completely exhausted
from a holiday for once hahha! Well I hope you enjoyed this trip report. If you
wish to visit Shrewsbury yourself and have some questions, just leave a comment
below and I will try to give you some tips or so.
Love,
Blacky
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