Trip to Norwich

I'm out tonight seeing Marina and the Diamonds in concert but wrote this blog post last night and scheduled it to post tonight so you'd have something to read :)

Back in August I asked mum if we could go away for a couple of days so I could have a change of scene. The rest of my family had been away to Glastonbury Festival in June but I'd not been away that summer. We looked for a city that would be easy to get to on the train(s) and that had a Premier Inn (because my older brother Chris works in one so could get us a discount) near the city centre. We decided on Norwich and booked just a week or so in advance. We decided we'd only be able to fit in staying for one night but that was enough for us :)

In the morn of Wed 18th Oct we got a lift to our local train station with mum's friend and work colleague so we wouldn't have to pay for overnight carparking. We caught the 10.10am train I think and while we were waiting there was a man also waiting who was playing the music in his earphones so loud that everyone else in the shelter could hear it, so I wasn't sure why he was even bothering with the earphones! We made sure we didn't sit near him or a drunken man (at 10am!) on the train. The first part of the journey went fine and then we only had about 5/10mins to wait for our next train. We found seats (facing forwards like I like) and had just got settled when we got turfed out those seats because someone else had reserved them, yet there weren't any reservation signs on them. We could only get seats facing backwards so mum complained when we saw an official person and apparently the reservation signs get left off a lot but it's the responsibility of someone at a different station so they can't do anything about it. Anyway, it turned out that at one of the next few stops the train went into the station and then back out again the same way, so we actually ended up facing forwards for most of the journey :) I just listened to my iPod on the train and mum knitted a sock.

We got into Norwich station at 12.30pm but couldn't book into the Premier Inn til 2pm. As we were going past anyway I persuaded mum we ought to pop in and see if our room was ready - and it was. So we could drop our overnight bags off then rather then lugging them round the city. We presented Chris' work card when we checked in as Chris had said it might entitle us to a discount, but it's at the member of staff's discretion when it's a weekday. We had a lovely lady checking us in and she agreed to let us have a discount. I think it was about 20% off :)

This was the Premier Inn we stayed in:


We walked into the centre and on the way looked in a few shops including some charity shops. We also visited a film shop and a lovely independent bookshop which we spent a bit of time browsing round.


Then we sat on some benches and ate our packed lunches.

After that we went to somewhere called Strangers' Hall which was like a museum and each room of the building was made up to be like it would have been from a different era in the past. Mum wanted to look at rooms from a certain era because she was reading a novel set in that time. I found the Victorian rooms quite interesting. In some of the rooms there were guides to tell you a bit about it and answer your questions but most of them seemed to be quite lonely elderly women who just talked and talked and talked! Hehe. On our way out we spotted a guidebook which we both thought would have been helpful before we went round the museum! The lady selling them said they were new in so we could be the first to have them, but we had to not look for typos because apparently there were a few! So we bought one to have a look at in our own time.

We then stopped for some drinks.


After that we went in another film shop and then went to the market. The yarn stall was just closing so mum thought we might go back the following day, but we didn't in the end. We then looked round some more charity shops, visited a shopping mall (where we picked up some toothpaste because before we set out we discovered our two small tubes were 3 years and 18 months out of date, whoops!), had a sit down (because my feet were really painful) and visited a few more shops. In The Works I bought a book of short stories to read while we were away. Then we had drinks in Starbucks, where they were testing all the alarms out! When we left there we passed a busker playing a penny whistle who had his pet ferret with him. It was very small for a ferret and so cute, so I had to stop and stroke it :) I want one!

By that time it was about 6pm I think so we headed to a Japanese restaurant for our evening meal. We went to an independent one called Shiki. I had green tea to drink and rather than having one big meal I had 2 half sized meals - chicken katsu and salmon teriyaki. My mum had avocado & tofu salad and vegetable tempura. We had a lovely time and enjoyed our meals.



After that we weren't ready to go back to the Premier Inn for the night so we walked out of the city centre and along the river to an area where there was a cinema, 10 pin bowling and lots of places to eat. We bought tickets to see a film a little while later and had drinks while we were waiting. It was good we bought the tickets earlier because when it came to time to go in the ticket queue was out the door!

After that we headed back to the Premier Inn and stopped for apple juices in the bar. I got stuck talking to a lonely business man until mum rescued me. Then a man came up to us and asked if he could show us some magic tricks. He did 3 and one of them was brilliant, I can't work out how he did it. It was a bit more complicated than this but basically he asked me to think of any card in a pack of cards and then he wrote down on a piece of paper what card he thought I was thinking of. Then I told him and he turned over the piece of paper and his guess was correct. Wow! The next day we saw him walking through the city in a suit with a briefcase - he must be a businessman by day and a magician by night :)

When we got back to our room mum attempted to run herself a bath but couldn't work out how to do it as she could only get cold water. While she was trying to sort it she accidentally pressed something which made the water come out of the shower rather than the taps - while her head was over the bath! Hehe :P She got her bath sorted eventually. She also spotted a sign on the mirror saying - 'If you've forgotten your toothpaste just contact reception'!

I didn't sleep very well that night, I think I must have woken up about 10 times during the night! So I was quite tired on Thur but my feet were feeling a bit better :)

We had breakfast at the Premier Inn and we'd just ordered continental, so we could help ourself to as much of the food as we wanted - just not the cooked stuff. So I had 3 croissants :D We then checked out of the Premier Inn because otherwise we would have had to return by midday to check out. They said we could leave our bags there though and pick them up later, so we left our overnight bags there as the Premier Inn was just next to the station. One of the members of staff complemented mum on her purple hair so she got very chatty with them and even told them about her sticking pantyliners on her forehead when she dyes her hair, so she doesn't get the dye on her skin! What's she like?!

From there we walked to a shopping centre on the other side of the city. Mum loved the architecture of it but neither of us were very impressed with the shops as they were mostly fashion clothes shops. We had drinks in a cafe there though and then when we left we found 3 charity shops in a row. I walked out of one in disgust after I saw they were charging £5 for second hand DVDs - you can buy new DVDs from £3 online! Then we got a bus to a street we wanted to explore at the other side of the city.

I saw this at the bus station:


On that street I found a shop like Cash Converters where I bought myself a DS game :) We found a few charity shops on that street and mum found some fabric shops but the only knitting shop she found was closed! We stopped for drinks in a nice cafe there.

We did a bit more wandering about including in some nice quaint streets


Then we found ourselves back at the mall we'd visited the day before. We'd been looking out for some sandwiches for lunch but I didn't fancy any we'd seen, so we had jacket potatoes in a cafe in the mall instead and I tried chicken tikka for the first time. I managed to finish it all :) Mum spotted that someone left their wallet behind so she handed it in. We planned to sit on some grass outside the mall for a bit as I was quite tired but of course as soon as we sat down the sun went in and it became quite chilly and windy, so we moved on.

We found a few more nice shops including a fair trade one and a craft one. On our way back to the Premier Lodge mum bought a newspaper which she put on top of her shoulder bag as her bag was quite full. A bit later mum realised the paper was nowhere to be seen and must have fallen off her bag somewhere back along the route. She didn't go back to try to find it though because we'd come down a hill and she didn't fancy walking back up it. We were both surprised how hilly Norwich was!

We had drinks in the Costa attached to the Premier Inn before picking up our bags and heading to the station. The first part of our journey went quite smoothly (I listened to my iPod again) apart from stopping temporarily part way because there was a fire on the line somewhere. We soon got moving again though and I thought that would be the end of the problems - I was wrong! At the station where we needed to change for our second train we learnt that all trains on our route had been cancelled because of this fire on the line (I think it was caused by a landslide or something like that).

Mum phoned Chris who agreed to come and pick us up from the station if need be, but then it sounded like there might be a train running so mum said she'd let him know what was happening. We got drinks and I got a croissant from Starbucks on the platform and dashed off to find out what was happening. A train was coming so we'd be able to get to our local station :) We got on the train and let Chris know we just needed picking up locally. Then we had our drinks and I got such a shock when I looked at the receipt. They'd charged me £1.70 for a cup of milk as that was the size of their smallest coffee! I couldn't believe it! Usually we'd have checked earlier but we'd been in a bit of a rush. Never mind.

When we got into our local station Chris was 15mins late to pick us up, but we eventually got home. What a journey! :P