Welcome back fellow Steemians.

Next up on my list of UK places I visited during my university exchange are Leamington Spa and Birmingham. Guess most people are familiar with Birmingham, but Leamington might be a different story. But I can already give away that both towns have their similarities. For example, both towns are excellent if you enjoy shopping!

Leamington Spa
Another town in the county of Warwickshire. In full: Royal Leamington Spa. This Spa town owed his recognition to the healing/medicinal qualities of the water from the river Leam, back in the 18th century. This town started to really develop later in the 19th century (mainly because in 1838 it received the Royal prefix from Queen Victoria). So the architecture is really different compared to the other nearby towns I recently described in another blog of mine.

At the end of the 19th century, interest in the whole spa industry declined which led to a decreasing economy for Leamington. Nowadays the place is mainly known as a place for retired people, rich people looking to shop and middle/ upper-class people "escaping" Coventry and Birmingham.

Some friends and I took a cab in Coventry to Leamington. It's also possible to reach the place by bus. The cab driver dropped us in the shopping area so we visited some stores first. Later we walked pass a well-known building called the Royal Pump Rooms and Baths. This building has served many purposes and is/was an important structure for the town in order of supporting the spa industry of Leamington.

Some older buildings in Leamington

And some newer ones (mainly around the shopping area)

Some of the highlights of Leamington are the Jephson Gardens and the All Saints' Parish Church. You will find the Jephson Gardens opposite of the Royal Pump Rooms and Baths. This park is a very popular tourist attraction and offers floral displays, a lake with a boathouse, cafes, and teahouses. It's a great place to spend your afternoon just relaxing, especially if the weather is nice. We wanted to hire a boat at first, but since we were students and were most of the time pretty broke, we kind of backed out. In the end, we just hung around in the sun, watching other people in their boats.

All Saints' Parish Church can be found in the towns centre. This gothic style church from the 19th century has some very nice stained glass artworks. It's also a treat to walk around it because it offers many opportunities for a nice picture.

Views of the	All Saints' Parish Church

Conclusion: Leamington is a nice town if you just want to have a relaxing day, but it also offers good shopping opportunities for the more active people.

Birmingham
Close to Coventry, you can easily reach it by train. I've been there multiple times, but mainly to get on or off my flight from the Netherlands. But one time my girlfriend came over from the Netherlands for a visit and some of my friends there wanted to visit a football match in Birmingham. So my girlfriend and I decided we came with them, but instead of going to the match we would visit the actual city. Birmingham is very different than all the places I described in my last blogs. No surprise there I guess since it's a quite big city. The estimated population more than 1.1 million. Commonly known in the past as the "the first manufacturing town", this town has a history of (economic and industrial) prosperity. Nowadays there isn’t much left of that history because the economy of the town is mainly focused on providing services. With all the recent transformations the city looks way more modern than your usual English town. For example the (re)development of the Bull Ring shopping centre. Surrounded by shopping streets, this major shopping centre is modern and offers everything a shoppers hearth desires. A lot of people might recognize the place due to the remarkable exterior of the Selfridges building.

Selfridges building

Museum & Art Gallery

A fun thing to do whilst visiting Birmingham is going up the library. This 144 meters high public library has a roof garden which offers a pretty nice view of the entire city. We visited the place in December so it was possible to take some night shots as well, but the downside was that it was pretty cold up there with the wind.

View from the top of the library

Library facade

Other great things to do in Birmingham are:

• Boat trip through the canals (the city as actually more kilometers of canals than Venice Italy)
• Visiting the Jewellery Quarter
• Visiting the St Martin church in the Bull Ring
• Visit a football game

Conclusion: Birmingham can compete with other big UK cities. It's great for shopping and also has a lot to offer if you're into art, history or architecture.

If you enjoy my work, please consider upvoting it and follow me for more travel blogs around the world.

Cheers, Stephan

If you’re interested in any of my previous work, feel free to check it out:

• Old castles and Shakespeare's birthplace. The UK at its best
• My personal experience with studying abroad in the UK for a semester
• Massive snowdump in the Alpes in Europe and I went snowboarding
• Malaysia: visiting the Mossy Forest and Tea plantations in the Cameron Highlands!
• Visiting the ancient temples of Ayutthaya in Thailand
• Long exposure photography. What settings and gear I use. Multiple photos inside!
• Vietnam backpackers route for 4 weeks (part 2 of 2)
• Vietnam backpackers route for 4 weeks (part 1 of 2)

!steemitworldmap 52.493662 lat -1.890417 long Birmingham d3scr