Birmingham Christmas Markets - Dungarees and Donuts

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I was recently asked to explore Birmingham as part of a campaign, as part of this collaboration I was given some spending money to explore Birmingham, however, all thoughts are my own as always. As someone who lives only a 30-minute train ride away from Birmingham, I couldn’t wait to spend my time in the city, especially now the German Market was in full swing. Despite living close to Birmingham, I don’t spend enough time here, there is always so much to explore, with the Bullring, Mailbox, Grand Central Station and it’s many shops and also outside of these places, there are miles of streets full of shops and restaurants too. If you are travelling to do your Christmas shopping here, I’d recommend staying in a hotel as there many hotels in Birmingham and it’s great for splitting up what you want to do and gives you a little break in between shopping. I mean there is so much walking my feet can do, and if you’re like me and want to go pretty much everywhere it can become a little much.

So I headed to Birmingham on Tuesday, ready to take on what Birmingham has to offer. When we arrived, we decided that food would be a great place to start, because who wants to shop on an empty stomach? I decided to try one of the many places in Grand Central and went to Tortilla which is a burrito bar which serves a variety of yummy food including tacos and nachos, which was an amazing experience and so reasonably priced too. Stay tuned for a full review of Tortilla in the near future.

With a belly full of food we headed outside to the German Market, which is a Frankfurt styled market it runs from New Street to Victoria Square, it is packed with stalls full of amazing food including crepes, hotdogs and chocolatey treats. There are pop up bars accompanied by adorable little tables, which are selling German beers and hot chocolate. Stalls which were selling coffee beans, popcorn and marshmallows. Along with an assortment of gift stalls which had a generous offering of Christmas decorations, jewellery, hand-painted ornaments and rainbow candles. Will and I decided to get some keyrings for ourselves and one for our friend. I went for Jessie keyring as she’s my fave and I’ve had a similar one in the past which I loved. After we had a long mooch around the stalls we headed back inside of Grand Central.

We went to a few shops within grand central including John Lewis and Hema, before heading through Link Street, which is where we found Driftroom a quirky store selling a range of gifts and lighting and we spoke to the shop owner who was happy enough for us to take photos of the goodies within. After 30 mins in the store, I decided to buy a new card game ‘cat chaos’ which I can’t wait to play and then we left. I was tempted to buy one the bigger lights but it was the idea of carrying it around and on the train which made us leave it behind.

We popped into the Disney Store and Debenhams also, where I purchased a jar of personalised Nutella. After this, we headed to Selfridges which is four floors of gifts, clothes and of course more food. We had a look at all four floors which we don’t often do, as I wanted to check out all it has to offer, and treated myself to a few bits from Paperchase and lusted over a Gucci bag. Once we had a look around we headed to Eds Diner to get some dessert, where I had waffles sandwiched together with Nutella and Will had cheesecake covered in peanut butter and chocolate sauce, washed down with a large Pepsi max each and with that we headed home to get the train.

I had a fabulous time exploring Birmingham and if my feet weren’t super painful I could have spent another few hours there for sure. I hope you enjoyed this post and if you’d like to see more posts on Birmingham let me know in the comments below.