Birmingham

While writing my last post on our engagement, I realized that I never posted pictures from our trip to Birmingham last June to pick out an engagement ring. We spent the morning in the diamond district, but we spent the rest of the day exploring the city. Better late than never, some pictures.

I didn't take many pictures in the diamond district or at the moissanite distributor (a tiny hole-in-the-wall buried in a very boring looking building) but here's a picture of a ring I much admired that didn't make the cut. I think it looks like leaves, but Mordu is strongly reminded of snakes:

After shopping, we sat down in St. Paul's Square, an old churchyard that doubles as a public green space, to take a lunch break:

The whole area is populated, seemingly randomly, with mossy tombstones:

I took many pictures (I won't bore you to death with tons of them) while Mordu sat on a bench and read. Here, I'm experimenting with "aging" the photo to look nostalgic. Instagram must have gotten to me.

In the 19th century, Birmingham was the world's largest manufacturer of pens. And by pens, they mean little metal nibs that are screwed onto wooden sticks and then dipped in an ink pot for a refill every few words. One of the factories is now a two-room museum. The factories are small because you really don't need much room for this kind of manufacturing.

Along the right wall is a row of machines that each serve a different function in the pen-making process.

The first machine punches out the basic shape of the metal:

And then other machines shape, mold, imprint, and further refine it:

This man showed us how it worked and let us then work down the machines, making our own pens:

And the last machine weighs the pens for packaging:

So many! Back in the day, you could buy a box of 100 for a penny.

Other display cases show various packaging for pens and pots of ink:

And this is a fancy display of pens for advertising purposes:

An imp-shaped inkwell:

We also got to try them out. They are actually delicious to use, my penmanship is way nicer using these than with a regular ballpoint:

Birmingham, like the rest of the U.K., has strange weather. Here are two pictures of the same street (looking opposite directions) taken a few seconds apart:

And while we were caught in a doorway during a downpour (this happened several times over the course of the day), I took random pictures of myself reflected in the glass:

The following two pictures are just for Katie ;-)

We had dinner in a pub called "The Shakespeare":

Afterward, we explored the downtown shopping district called "Bullring Market". These buildings are all quite new:

The requisite bull:

A rather bizarre building that is part of the new shopping and office complex:

And again from a different angle:

The secret to the success of this shopping district: free cash!

And, finally, we walked around to see a bit more of the city at sundown:

City Hall:

Glass elevator: