Day 16 - Birmingham

Sadly today was our last full holiday day. We were in Birmingham for the whole day though, not much driving required. Our first stop was Vulcan Park which was quite near our hotel. The park is on a hill and features a giant cast iron vulcan (not spock) on top of a giant tower. It's the world's largest cast iron statue and was built for the 1904 St Louis World Fair. The view from the park was amazing, the city was spread out below and as we hadn't been into the city yet it was a good way to orient ourselves. We when we arrived they advised that the lift was out and it was 150 steps to the top of the tower but luckily by the time we were ready to go up they had fixed it! The view from the top was great but the floor was perforated so I couldn't stay up for long due to the horror!

Our next stop was the Irondale Cafe which was the inspiration for Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-stop Cafe. Fannie Flagg's aunt owned it and she used to help out. Just like the fictional cafe, the train station is right outside and trains were constantly going past during our visit. It's also famous for its fried green tomatoes. We got there at 1130 as it gets crazy busy. It's a "meat and 3" restaurant which is a popular style of old-school restaurant round these parts. Basically you choose your main and then 3 sides, or less obviously. I had country fried steak, K had chicken and dumplings and between us we got 5 sides to share - fried green tomatoes (obviously), mash, fried okra, mac cheese and cabbage. We also got sweet tea (obviously). The food was great, too much obviously but we didn't finish it all. Everything was great and the fried green tomatoes were delicious, the mash was pretty special too.

Post lunch we headed into town. I had noted the location of some cool murals so we wandered about and saw all them and a few more. We also stopped by the civil rights district,  Kelly Ingram Park had brilliant sculptures all round it telling stories from the civil rights era. The city was great but it was very very hot. We wandered round Railroad Park which is a great park just South of downtown.

Our next stop was Sloss Furnaces which is an old pig iron furnace that closed in 1971. It was amazing,  we took approximately one million photos! It was a massive site and seemed to be just as it was, it basically seemed like a potential death trap. Genuinely my number one recommendation for Birmingham.

We were definitely ready to cool down by this point so we headed to the Avondale neighbourhood. The Avondale Brewery had a big al fresco event on with a live band, games and loads of people. As it was outside there were loads of dogs there, I mean loads, loads of cute puppies too. I got one of their own brew beers and they brew their own root beer too so K got to have something cool too. It was really busy so we shared a table with a couple of girls. We ended up chatting to them for quite a while, turned out they were an OT and a PT so K had some therapy chat with them. They were super friendly and recommended some local joints for dinner. They hated Trump which was a relief.

Post Avondale we headed to the 5 Points South neighborhood,  it has the weirdest fountain I've ever seen. We had a wee wander about then went to Jim N Nicks Bar-B-Q for dinner.  It was recommended by the girls and was on my possible list so it seemed like the right choice.

K got a fried chicken salad (giant) and I thought I'd just get a baked potato with pulled pork so it wasn't to heavy. What arrived was the biggest potato I've ever seen in my life! It was really good but I couldn't remotely finish it, it had cheese, sour cream, pulled pork, bacon and bbq sauce. K's salad was great too, the chicken was delicious. She took half of it away. We also got given delicious cheese biscuits which were actually wee muffins. Amazing.

After dinner we just headed back to the hotel so we could sort everything out before we leave tomorrow. We managed to get everything in our cases then we watched some American TV including 2 episodes of Celebrity Name Game hosted by Craig Ferguson which was brilliant.

Tomorrow we head to Atlanta then fly home at 10pm. Unfortunately, we change time zone between Birmingham and Atlanta so we lose an hour.

Night y'all!

Comments

  1. Aidan8 May 2017 at 01:18

    I hope there are pics of said pig iron furnace and perforated floor. Haha fried green tomatoes - don't think I've ever had actual fried green tomatoes though. It also reminds me of that film 'mystic pizza'. Do you remember that? I liked it but mostly cause it had pizzas in it. Glad k got a root beer, and it sounds a bit like you pulled those birds too. Aww the puppies. Can't believe tomorrow is your last day and you're losing time. The UK is much the same as when you left, although we had local elections and macron won in France. I told Steven if macron won we should celebrate with macaroni pie, so we're having 4 coop macaroni pies for dinner. See you soon x

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