Continued from Part 1…
On the Sunday morning, we decided to take a quick drive in to Coventry for breakfast, seeing as how poor the Ibis breakfast was; we stopped off at The Earl of Mercia, a Wetherspoons in the centre, not far from the cathedrals. The breakfast here was much better than at the hotel, very filling, preparing us for the day ahead!
We had a good walk around Coventry city centre for the first part of the day, as we mostly skipped it on the Saturday. It was a very nice city, with some interesting architecture; there were a few plaques around telling how the city was completely redesigned a few decades back, hence all the concrete structures. After a couple of hours in the centre, we stopped at a Café Nero for a light lunch, which hovered above the ground in the middle of a shopping centre.
After lunch, we set off on our daily adventure to visit Nottingham city and the castle. We arrived around 2pm and walked through the city centre to get to the castle, the council building was really lovely in the centre, standing proudly in the Old Market Square surrounded by shops.
We got to the castle, which was situated on a small hill, surrounded by shrubberies and trees, and effigies of Robin Hood.
Once we got inside the walls, it wasn’t that much of a castle, more of a large estate or museum, but still very impressive.
The décor was beautiful, with mosaic floorings, ornate pillars, and grand staircases everywhere. We spent a lot of time looking at the artwork in the gallery and browsing the museum. One painting in particular had me fixated for a good 10 minutes; I loved it so much that Helen ordered a print of it for my birthday. It was called “The Imposition”, by Helena Ben-Zenou, a picture of it is below:
On our way out, there was a wedding service about to take place, with the bride being delivered in a classic car, she looked pretty nervous.
After our trip to the castle, we walked around the city some more, by this time it was gone 4pm, so we started thinking about what we were going to do for dinner as well. We found a Piccolino and booked a table for 6pm, then had another roam around the city. We also found a beautiful old church converted in to a bar/restaurant called The Pitcher and Piano where we stopped for a drink. It was odd to see a bar built in to a church, but it worked really well, the contrast of old and new was very nice.
Once we’d finished our drinks at The Pitcher and Piano, and our dinner at Piccolino, we headed back to the hotel, worn out from all the exploring.
On the Monday morning, we were feeling pretty tired, we checked out of the hotel late-morning and made our way back in to the centre of Coventry for breakfast at The Earl of Mercia one last time, then headed home to spend the rest of the Bank Holiday Monday relaxing.