Bimingham Adventure Day Two | City Centre

To finish of my Birmingham blog posts, which have taken me so long to write oops, today I'm going to be posting about day two of our trip. Day one can be read here and Slam Dunk festival day three can be found here for anyone who hasn't already checked them out. As day one was a more chilled and relaxed day we decided that for day two we were going to travel to Birmingham city centre and check out what the city life was like there. It was extremely opposite to how calm it was on the first day and we had a jam packed day of shopping, exploring and just being a general tourist. I really love writing these too.

   

   

We got the bus to the city centre, and thankfully did not get lost on the way by some miracle. We got off at the Bullring shopping centre where we spent most of the day. The place is absolutely huge, like four floors with two separate buildings packed full of shops, as well as endless amounts of roads with interconnecting malls, markets and shops it was crazy trying to find our way around. There were just too many places to visit. There was such a beautiful cathedral right across from the shopping centre and I really liked how the old merged with the new it was nice. I spent way too much time looking around in Superdrug as the Superdrug in the UK is much bigger and better. Plus there were shops such as Victoria Secret and Krispy Kreme that we don't have in Dublin and I was super excited to visit. We picked up four doughnuts to try and they were so delicious and aesthetically pleasing I must say. How pretty and tasty do they look?

After exploring and buying a few bits in the shopping mall we decided to explore the streets. The cute cacti are from Urban Outfitters. The place seemed never ending and we were so tired after visiting almost every shop the place had to offer that we didn't end up going too far. I had wanted to visit some more historic sights but we got slightly lost and ended heading back to shop and took a visit to shops such as Lush, which are always a good choice.

   

   

   

All our shopping had worn us down so we decided to grab Pizza Hut for dinner, We got a Margarita to share with fries and bottomless Pepsi, which came in about five different flavours like cherry and vanilla it was so interesting. Again look how good the food looks. It makes me so hungry looking at it. Pizza Hut do the best thick pizza bases I've ever tried. So good.

   

We just headed back to the hotel after food as it took about an hour on the bus. Who knew shopping could be so tiring? Although we have most of the same shops back in Dublin it's always interesting to see what they're like in other countries. I'd also never been to a shopping centre so big before it was so intimidating but so cool I really wish we had something like it over here it's a lot of fun, but bad for your bank I guess. 

With this post is the end of my little Birmingham travel posts I hope you've enjoyed reading them as I did writing them.

Has anyone ever been in Birmingham city centre before or the Bullring shopping centre before? 

Birmingham Adventure Day One | Nature Trails

In a previous post I've written about my recent journey to Birmingham  for the Slam Dunk festival. As the festival was only a day long and I was over there for three I decided to do a little trip and adventure post to document my trip, as it was super amazing. 

   

Travelling from Dublin to Birmingham takes a little over half an hour which is pretty handy, although travelling still takes it out of you regardless of how far you're travelling. We stayed in a hotel in the Birmingham NEC area which is right next to the airport and also beside the arena where the festival took place which means everything was only about half an hour away which was great. The NEC area is super pretty and we went on plenty of nature walks. 

   

The NEC area has a lot of hotels surrounding so it makes sense that they have a really pretty shopping centre right beside a man made lake, which was just beautiful in the sunset. We decided to grab food in Gormet Burger which is different in the UK than in Ireland. The fries in the UK are so much skinnier and nicer, the whole meal was literally so so good and even thinking about it and looking at the picture makes me want it again so bad. 

There was also a lot of wildlife to be found on our little nature walks and it was so peaceful and calming. There was an abundance of bunnies which made me super happy. I also just really enjoyed being away in new surroundings away from everything.

   

   

Just look how pretty the flowers and the sunset are. Day one was not the most interesting but it was so relaxed and pretty, I hope you enjoyed reading a little travel journal! 

Has anyone ever been here before or go on any nice nature trails? 

Someday Summary 8.4.16

The past two weeks have been hectic for me but I finally feel like things are settling back into place and that makes me happy. I've a few things planned to put on my blog so I like being organised plus I have a few things to look forward to so yay. I've a lot of spare time today so I thought I'd do a little summary of my day and other various assortments while I can.

         

• Before college today myself and Jack went on a cute breakfast/brunch date just for the sake of it. I got a cookie hot chocolate, if you consider Oreos a cookie and he got green tea in a green cup. Then we shared banana and caramel pancakes, yum. They were so good, although I do wish I got the strawberry one because they're my fave.
• We booked tickets to Slam Dunk festival in Birmingham in May, which means we get to see Panic! At the Disco, Moose Blood, As It Is, The Story So Far, Real Friends, Roam and so much more. Literally so many musicians I love and at a festival. It's something I'm super excited for, plus I get to leave the country for a while, how exciting.
• I've been really loving college lately. Not that it's not stressful I just really love my class mates and course lately, even though I've double the amount of assignments this semester. I'm going to be sad to leave for the summer.
• I've a huge amount of Easter chocolate in my room which is a blessing and a disaster, I literally will have so much chocolate for ages, not sure whether it's good or bad. Mini Eggs and Lindt chocolate are angels.
• I've felt like I haven't been listening to good music recently and I've gotten into listening to more pop punk, indie and alternative stuff again and it makes me so happy. I recently went to see The 1975 and have been enjoying their music and the pop vibes and chill like quality. My favourite songs are 'Love Me' and 'Somebody Else'. Also today actually I started to listen to Melanie Martinez and I really love her stuff, especially 'Pity Party' at the moment. It's very Marina and the Diamonds-esque AKA my favourite artist ever so I'm gonna love her I can already tell.
• On the topic of music I've been uploading more covers over on my YouTube if you wanna have a nosey, I'll put the link here, shameless plug. My most recent cover is of Demi Lovato's 'Catch Me.'

How's everyone else today? Have you any good news?

Thoughtful Spot | Social Media Glory

It's been a long time since I've graced the internet with muffled thoughts and unpopular opinions. Don't get me wrong I love social media and how connected it brings me to the people and things I love. It's a wonderful phenomenon but I think it's really easy to get caught up in the virtual world and forget to live your real life too, well I do anyway, I could be odd. Recently, in the past week I've been feeling very strange towards social media and how I feel there is a constant need to impress others, myself and even seeing it in other people.
  I do notice that I spend way too much time scrolling through the likes of Instagram and Facebook and looking into other peoples lives and wishing I had a certain outfit or item. Sometimes this makes me feel a lot of pressure about how I live my life and also what I should be doing to impress others. This isn't true ninety percent of the time, I love reading what other people have to say but sometimes it feels like too much. It's like a sensory and visual overload and I think I need to be able to step away from it a little more, especially if it makes me feel negative.

I think sometimes I'm more susceptible to letting other people's greatness make me feel unnecessary and underachieved but I know it's also the fact I'm not an over sharer while other people are to an extent. I think it's about time I stopped getting so caught up in the parts of the internet that make me feel inadequate, like if I saw a really pretty person and compared myself to them, I need to learn not to do that and not feel like I need to be better than others. I don't normally see things as like 'competition' but if I feel really low then I take things like that, I'm not sure if anyone can relate at all I'm not expressing this clearly.

I never feel pressure writing or reading blogs it's like a different atmosphere completely and it's a good kind of social space like all the time so I don't think I need to limit my blog usage. Yet on other platforms I'm making it a priority to cut down on wasting so much unnecessary time scrolling through things that aren't useful to me and are taking time out of my actual day and making me less productive than I should be.

Anyway, over the next week I wanna decrease my internet time and test how it'll affect my life/mood just as sort of a test to myself to see how it makes me feel because I know I can't go anywhere without my phone glued to my hand and I feel disconnected not using the internet for an hour. I wanna be more aware of my surroundings and try and get my head back in shape and in order. Then I shall hopefully have some new, fresh blog post ideas ready. I'll see what happens and if I can manage it.

Anyone else ever feel overwhelmed by Social Media and it's good and bad effects?

Someday Summary | 26.10.15

I'm currently sitting in Starbucks and even though it's only 9am I want to write something. I know if the caption is a 'summary' of my day that should entail that it's the end of the day but I guess it doesn't have to be as of now, I'm really good with logic. I just want to write random things and give myself a purpose to be honest.

 

• Since it's almost Halloween, I did the first spooky thing of the year yesterday by carving a pumpkin, probably the only spooky thing I'll do this year. I never do dressing up scary very well but I'm a huge fan of horror films and Halloween in general. I wish Halloween was as big of a festivity as Christmas is, it just gets over looked and it's sad. I do think pumpkin carving is such a cute and fun idea though. It smells a bit pungent but it's okay it looks super cute once you put a candle in it. All my pumpkins end up looking happy not scary, even if I tried.
• I'm currently tracking the Dublin Marathon online and watching where Jack is, sounds super creepy. I think it is pretty scary though how I can see exactly where he is. I'm cheering him on from here,  he'll most likely see this later so hi you're currently on 3.9m at 32:32 whatever that means. Looking at the Marathon map is actually so daunting but I would love to do it sometime, even if I just walk it. I salute all you Marathon runners, go you.  
• I should probably be doing some college work but I'm currently trying to update all my social medias, ie my blog. I have written about my first few weeks of college but whether I post it is another thing, it's a bit of a rant, surprise surprise.
• I had a really good weekend catching up with family and friends and it made me really happy. 
• To add to this half Halloween themed post, I watched the Nightmare Before Christmas for the first time yesterday, and it's really good. I'm always so behind on must see films. I think the actual plot was missing a lot of things but what it's lacking the music makes up for. The fact it's a musical makes the film ten times better. It's my current Halloween soundtrack. 
• In other Halloween film news I went to see Crimson Peak the other day, I actually planned to see Pan but howsoever. It was less creepy and more morbid. It was very gruesome and  my type of horror is more paranormal and supernatural. I think the reason I thought it was good was because Tom Hiddleston was the main character. Either way most horror films are not the best anyway so I don't expect much.

Anyone doing anything nice for Halloween? 

Belfast Trip & Adventure

I have no idea why this has taken me so long to get around to writing, I've been meaning to do it for a week. Following my last post, as I went to a festival up in Belfast, which is 2 and a half hours from my house, I stayed up there for two days and decided to be as tourist as I could in those two days. Being the photographer I think I am, I took an abundance of photos because I think the city is really beautiful and wanted to try taking more photos to capture moments. This was also the first independent trip I've been on so it was so exciting and momentous for me. That being said, this post will most likely be super long but pretty colourful.

   

    

On the first day we traveled up we got lost and ended up just walking down streets for a while because I had read the map backwards. It didn't bother me though because I love it there.

We did the typical tourist thing by going to a new place but going somewhere that you've been to before, we got a Starbucks. We chilled there for a while until we got back to our hotel to get ready for the festival, as seen in my previous blog post. 

   

     

Again, we did the thing and didn't explore at all. We went for dinner in a Nando's that was conveniently attached to our hotel. It's probably the prettiest Nando's I've seen to date. It was delicious as always and we got to meet Josh from Twenty One Pilots outside our hotel after the meal, I'm still fangirling. I already blogged about the actual concert so I'll just move on to our second day.

Our second day was our exploring and shopping day. We explored most of the main streets and spent most of our time in Victoria Square, the main shopping centre. It's the prettiest shopping centre I've ever seen. It's indoors and outdoors at the same time. The roof is made out of glass and it goes up super high up to this platform that you can see a three hundred and sixty degree view of the city and the mountains you can see past it. It's such an amazing sight but the top of the building is kind of like a greenhouse and it gets super hot so you can't really stay up there for long without melting. 

They had some sort of Alice in Wonderland themed thing going on when we were there, which I got super excited about. They had scenes from the whole movie there, both the original and the Tim Burton version. They had a mini maze for children, which we still did that was actually fun even though it was tiny and nothing like a real maze. They also had a cute little reenactment of the Mad Hatter's tea party which was actually so real feeling. Everything was just really cute and it really brought back my love for Alice in Wonderland and a lot of the things in it. Why don't shopping malls/centres near me do this kind of stuff?

We shopped for most of the day and bought a few clothes items and other bits and just wandered really. The shops were basically the exact same to what we have back home too so it was nice to see the shops with different designs and layouts. We went to the Disney store, which is tiny compared to the Dublin one and I got a Winnie the Pooh teddy bear that I've wanted for a while because it was cheaper there. It's my favourite thing from the trip, thanks Jack. It rained for the second half of the day and we got too cold to explore half the places I'd wanted to visit.

The last thing we did was go out for a fancy meal to an Italian restaurant. We got dough balls, which are the best starter ever, just saying and pizza. My pizza is the plain one, what a surprise. It was so nice but I felt sick half way through the meal and we had to go back to the hotel earlier than we should've which was really disappointing, I blame the rain making me sick. Even though we stayed in the hotel for the rest of the trip it was really nice to go somewhere else for a change, I never go away at all anymore.

I never went away for like a really short trip before and it's actually so nice and not as expensive as a week holiday, obviously but still. I hope to come back really soon or go somewhere and do something like this again. This post was really odd but I hope you enjoyed the travel journal sort of thing.

Anyone go anywhere nice over the summer?