A trip to Cadbury world

When I realized this week that Cardiff is only 3 hours away from the original Cadbury chocolate factory, I was very excited and this we were able to pull off a day trip to visit yesterday!  We (14 Colgaters in all) took a megabus to and from Birmingham (which is actually in England, making this technically my first international trip since being here), leaving Cardiff at 7:30 am and returning a bit after 11 pm.  It was a long day but very fun and delicious!

We arrived at 10:30 and had a few hours to kill before our tour at 3, so we spent that time exploring the city of Birmingham.  It had a HUGE pedestrian only shopping area, called the Bull Ring and a huge open-air market.  We spent most of this time in the market--it seemed endless--and I enjoyed a few cups of 50 pence coffee, bought some chocolate (6 for 1 pound!), and a 1 pound sweater.  The prices were incredible here and I am regretting now that I didn't buy the 5 for 1 pound mangoes or 8 for 1 pound avocados.

The market.

Great place to walk around.

Perfect weather and very pretty.

After a short train ride, we arrived at Cadbury world where we took the tour.  The tour was very underwhelming but we did get a lot of chocolate on it--3 bars and 3 cups of warm melted chocolate.

The Cadbury factory is ENORMOUS.

The long and boring tour was worth the chocolate.

Back in Birmingham, we enjoyed a nice pub dinner and then headed back to Cardiff, very full and tired.