"Home Sweet Home" a Birmingham Travel Page by eddilowe

I love this City....it makes me angry the outdated opinions that people very often have about Brum and so I will make it the purpose of my Birmingham VT page to let people know (slowly) about all that this glorious city has to offer.

When I decided to start building my Birmingham page I sat down with my family and a large pad of paper and had a brainstorming of all the Things to do I could list. It became all too apparent that there were a) lots of places I knew about but had never been to and b) there were even more places I had not heard of and hence never been to! :o(

I will only write tips for places I have been to so it's given me a bit of an incentive to get out there and explore my own City and the surrounding areas.

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My most recent foray into the depths of Brum was a mammoth trip round Hockley, better known as The Jewellery Quarter

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The City has changed quite dramatically of recent times and the city centre has undergone huge changes. Birmingham is now home to one of the largest shopping centres in Europe - The Bull Ring, which you may have seen with the space age selfridges to one end...... It is covered with 15,000 aluminium discs (you can see part of it in the photo lower down the page.

Also, see my General Tip regarding Tourist Information Centres which lists all the locations and telephone numbers etc....

Composer Albert Ketelbey (an ancester of mine), Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath (Tony Iommi is often seen shopping in Tesco at Shirley, Solihull apparently), Jasper Carrott, Cat Deeley, Toyah Willcox, Duran Duran (Simon Le Bon is an honorary Brummie), UB40, Stevie Winwood, Robert Plant (who is technically from the Black Country but can be seen shopping in Brum), Frank Skinner, JRR Tolkein, Lenny Henry, Sir James Watt, Matthew Boulton, Spaghetti Junction, Noddy Holder, Dexys Midnight Runners, Nigel Mansell, Roy Wood from Wizzard (my dad knew him in his younger days), Cadburys chocolate, Charles Darwin, Don MacClean, Ocean Colour Scene, Ruby Turner, tennis player Ann Jones, football commentator Gary Newbon, Richie Neville of 5ive, Neville Chamberlain, figure skater John Curry, Tony Hancock, Enoch Powell, WH Auden, Barbara Cartland, Trevor Eve, Jamelia, Robert Kilroy-Silk, Ian Lavender, Sue Lawley, Sir Simon Rattle, Mandy Rice Davis of the Profumo affair, actor Pat Roach, Moody Blues, Chris Tarrant, DJ Johnnie Walker, ex F1 commentator Murray Walker, Julie Walters, Phil Lynott, silent movie star Albert Austin, Edward Burne-Jones

....and I'm sure there are many, many more!