A weekend away.

Brunel's Bridge.

Alex and I recently spent the weekend away - we took advantge of a free stay in the Marriott Hotel in Bristol. We had tried to stay there once before, but the situation was turned on its head and we ended up not being able to stay there but being put up in a penthouse suite in another hotel - I guess it probably wasn't so bad!

This time, we arrived and were treated like royalty our whole stay - a deluxe double room with double aspect windows and an amazing view of the city. We settled in, unpacked and started to flick through the travel books, relaxed in the gigantic bed, and then there was a knock at the door. I answered it, and a member of the hotel staff had sent us up a box of chocolates, 2-4-1 cocktail offers, coffee shop deals, and a postcard of the Zoo with a note - 'Enjoy your stay, and we hope you love the zoo.' Thanks, Will!

We had heard so much about this suspension bridge in Clifton; Brunel's Bridge, so we decided to go and have a little look and see what all the fuss was about.... Wow.

I'm absolutely petrified of heights, but I knew I couldn't go to Bristol and not walk on the bridge. I'm so glad I did, because it was incredible. The views were insane! We were lucky that we picked a day that the weather was good, I can imagine if you go when it's raining it wouldn't be such a good experience.

GBK.

We then decided to climb even further up the hill where there's a viewing platform, little museum, and picnic/park area, and the view from there looked down over the bridge. You can see from the picture that the bridge is huge, and really, really high up - eeeeek!

After our little adventure up, over, and above the bridge, we decided to wander around the town for a little while, and found a cute little chocolate shop that we wanted to get lunch in, but they had stopped serving food - gutted. So instead, we ended up going to Gourmet Burger Kitchen. I'd never been to GBK before, but I'm so glad we went there on that day and tried it out. I had a standard beef burger, with sweet potato fries and THE BEST milkshake I've ever tasted. It was salted caramel, and it was served in a big silver container. Not even a glass. An actual container - almost like a big cocktail shaker. YUM.

After eating until we felt sick, we went back to our lovely hotel for a little power nap before we headed off for a quick swim/hot tub session, and then back down to the bar for our cocktails. Ideal.

Our new mate.

The rain was absolutely hammering it down in Bristol when we went to go to the zoo, so we never did go again that weekend.

We actually had visited Bristol Zoo during one of our other weekends away in Bristol, but we were so busy we didn't end up getting there until later in the day, and didn't have much time to get around the whole place.

They have got some really cool animals though, like lions, crocodiles, and Alex ended up hand feeding this little monkey through the bars at the top of the cage - amazing. Not even gonna lie, he was my lock screen on my phone for about 4 weeks after we went. Just look at his little face!!

Bristol Zoo have recently got some new animals that we can't wait to see - like a whole new 'land'. It's got flamingos now, and kangaroos I think, and some other animals that are worth going to see.

Heaven on earth.

The second part of our weekend away was literally my dream come true. Alex and I drove from Bristol to Birmingham, and we went to the one and only Cadbury World. We had pre-booked our tickets because I'd heard it gets very busy, and it definitely had. Our experience started at 11am, but we got there around 10.30 and waited in reception, and by the time 11am came around, all tickets for that day were sold out. Not good. But we were fine. Thankfully - I would have been that person crying and throwing a strop if I couldn't have gone in! Haha!

First, we went to the Cadbury 4D cinema - considering this place is really for kids, I had the best time in there. You go through a door into what I actually genuinely believed was a lift - I later learned it doesn't move, just shakes about and has crazy good graphics and a film to watch to go with it. It takes you through to a part of the world where you play silly games with the host, and then you go through to the main part - the cinema. You sit in your big chair, put on your glasses, and get ready to go. I was holding on to the sides of the chair, because it feels so real, you believe you might just get chucked out of your chair at any minute. Even the loop the loop that you do, I nearly screamed. Deffo didn't wanna embarrass Al, but it almost happened.

When we went inside the main part of Cadbury World, we realised you're not meant to take photos so I don't have loads. There are a few places you can, and some places that photography is strictly forbidden.

My Mr P. 

 Inside, you go through the building section by section, see the whole making of Cadbury from whenever it first began - where they source the beans, how they make the packaging etc - sounds bad but I wasn't interested in all this, all I wanted was to eat the chocolate and go to the shop.

There was one section of the museum that I loved, which was a pretend shop with a CLOSED sign on the door, but through the windows of the shop you could see the Cadbury creations through the decades - I was sending my mum pictures of certain things that she would have known about when she was a kid - she was getting excited and couldn't believe that she had forgotten about so many of them. It's weird seeing how some stuff used to look, compared to how we know them now.

Time lapse.

The main attraction of our time at Cadbury World was absolutely, definitely, without fail, the shop. My good God. I just can't even begin to explain it. Any kind of Cadbury chocolate, you will buy in that shop. In excess. Not only do they do chocolate that you know and love, they make chocolate sculptures - Alex got a 3D football, and obviously, I got a 3D shoe. You can see in the picture below that I went IN on the shop, and we ended up spending £50 on chocolate and sweeties. Hehehe. There's a little corner of the shop where you can go in and buy in bulk - 10 Curly Wurlys for like £1.20, 10 Freddos for £1, 10 bars of Fudge for £1 etc. My heaven! I love chocolate buttons, and I cannot resist Dairy Milk Oreo bars - so naturally I bought 3 of the big family sized share bars to keep me going. They also had Bassetts Jelly Babies and other sweets too, so I took advantage of that, of course.

I can't even give this a proper caption.

 
As a momento, Alex got me a little mug with chocolate bars in it and a little teddy too. It's cute. Can't wait to use it when we move out :)

We had plans to go to the cinema when we were in Birmingham, but we had some spare time inbetween Cadbury World and the cinema, so we decided to just take a wild stab in the dark and turn up at the Safari Park.

It was good, but soooo busy. So again, we didn't get a chance to go round the whole Safari Park, but we will go back and do it again.

When we arrived, we were given a ticket for free entry another time we visit the park - nice touch. We saw some animals and sat in a lot of traffic. Was a bit dull and my feet were aching from all the stopping and starting. I'm sure if we were to go now instead of summer holidays, it would be a lot quieter and we'd be able to see more of the animals.

It was good though. The animals were really active, and in the lion enclosure there's an off-road option where you literally go on a dirt track, through puddles, through mud etc - my ideal of hell in my little baby car, but we did it anyway, and we were so lucky that we did! All the lions were far away from the road, and were close to the off-road track. We got so close to them, and sat in standstill traffic so we saw them all together, lazing about, having a little stroll, playing, fighting, everything. It was amazing. Sadly we left in a hurry to make sure we got to the cinema on time - we had already pre-booked our tickets, so we were rushing and didn't want to miss the film.

We went to Everyman Cinema at The Mailbox in Birmingham. I'd seen a few people post on Instagram or Twitter about having been there, so we thought we'd give it a go. We got there finally after spending about half an hour driving round in circles trying to find parking! We both got a drink - I got a Cosmo, what a dream. We went in, sat down and snuggled up on our private sofa with a footrest ready for the film.

We saw The Man From Uncle, which was really, really good. I didn't think Alex would enjoy it, but thankfully he did, too.

On the way out of Birmingham, we drove past this - it's actually not a Custard Factory, but the sign was cute and a girl can dream. Haha. It's actually a creative office space. I think it hosts shopping, offices, events space to hire etc. Not as fun as it looks from the outside!

Overall, we had the best weekend in both Bristol and Birmingham - even if there was a lot of driving involved, we both had so much fun. If you're ever in either of these two places, make sure you try to visit some of the places we did - you won't regret it!


With love, Georgie x