Dec 2012 — Midlands Trip (Birmingham and Kenilworth Castle)

2 days ago, Cyndi and I decided that we were tired of sitting home during the Christmas break.  We took a look at English Heritage places–as members, we don’t have to pay an admission fee–and checked out Traveloge for cheap hotels.  We decided we’d visit Kenilworth Castle near Birmingham, England.

Here’s one picture, click the read more link below to see more pictures and read more about our trip.

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The weather hasn’t been great.  In fact, after starting off the summer under water restrictions, we recovered and this year is on track to be one of the wettest ever.  It started raining shortly before Christmas and has done nothing else since.

Yesterday, Friday, we left our home.  We ended up and sat in traffic for a good 1.5 hours on the M25 around London.  We went to Birmingham, England where we walked around.  Here’s a few pictures of the lights in the central shopping area of the city:

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This morning, we woke up and went to the castle.  At one time, this castle was occupied by King John–the King John who signed the Magna Carta. Back in the day, he spent £1,100 (they said that was over £5 million today) to increase the security of the castle.  Later on, after the English Civil War, castles were slighted (partially destroyed) and Kenilworth was no exception.  That means this castle has set in ruins longer than the USA has existed.  Wow.  Here’s a picture of a model of the grounds:

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 If you want to see more pictures of the castle, check out our Kenilworth Castle set on Flickr.

As we were leaving, we saw this really small el camino type car/truck in the car pack.  How small was it?  For scale, check out Isaac standing beside it!

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