A Visit To Birmingham - Christmas Markets & Sealife

On Saturday the boys and I went with my in-laws and my sister in law and her boyfriend to Birmingham, whilst Adam was away in London working and selling his designs at London Film & Comic Con. Ethan had been asking about visiting an Aquarium for a little while and I managed to exchange some of our Tesco Clubcard vouchers for Sealife Birmingham tickets! Whilst we were there the Birmingham Christmas Markets were on so we thought we'd visit them too. Although it turns out, the markets were absolutely rammed! We expected it to be busy, but not quite as busy as it actually was! But still it was nice to see some of the festivities, although I have to say I am not quite feeling ready for Christmas just yet - it seems to have completely crept up on us and I feel like I've blinked and we've jumped from Summer to Christmas already!

We had a really nice time at Sealife, the boys, and in particular Ethan, were super interested in looking at all of the sea life and it was amazing to be able to see the animals up close. We saw Sea Otters, Sharks, Penguins, Turtles, Clownfish, Octopus, Jellyfish, Sting Rays, Seahorses and more and they all seemed to be happy and well cared for. There's also a super cool ocean tunnel there too which has a giant sea turtle in amongst other sea life such as sharks and rays. It's absolutely amazing to be completely surrounded by animals from the ocean, we loved the tunnel! The boys also had the chance to gently stroke some star fish, which was such a great experience for them! I thought that Sealife was really well set up and thought out, the only thing to mention is that there's not a cafe there, although there's plenty of cafes around outside such as Cafe Nero and Costa, as well as some restaurants too!

We had a really nice time at Sealife and whilst the Christmas markets were far more busier than we had anticipated it was still a nice way to kick off the festivities for Christmas!