Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Can anyone recommend a B&B or budget hotel in Birmingham somewhere fairly central but quietish? AirBnB results are uninspiring at best and from looking at the usual hotel sites and Tripadvisor it's hard to tell if you're not that familiar with different areas.


Thanks.

We stayed here and it was clean and family run.

http://eatonhotel.co.uk/

Easy to find and car parking- we managed to walk to Edgbaston from here too.

We had a room at the rear and it was nice and quiet.

Can absolutely NOT recommend the Marriott in Birmingham

I stayed in the Premier Inn on Hagley Road a few times l;ast year. It's your standart PI joined to a Beefeater (with through door) where breakfast is served.


10 - 15 minutes bus ride to New Street. So not exactly central, but very easily accessible.

It was great on the whole.


My favourite bits:

- B'ham Museum for Staffordshire Hoard, social history of B'ham (much more interesting than that sounds), Pre-Raphaelites and lovely tearoom - catnip for ladies of a certain age, really.

- Back to Backs Museum tour

- Great Western Arcade, particularly chocolate shop (owner commutes from Lyons) and macaroon shop ('I've had my macaroons on a low light since Wednesday' - Mrs Overall in Brummie accent).

- (Added later) The people seemed friendlier, warmer and better mannered than in London, which I liked very much. Often I have to leave London for a while to remember how aggressive and selfish people can be.


Less impressed by:

- Jewellery quarter. Great if you want to buy jewellery but not much else going on. In 10 years it'll probably be amazing.

- Copthorne Hotel. Staff are polite and helpful but the place is desperately run down, no airco in rooms and surrounded by huge building sites and busy roads so opening the window isn't appealing (though to be fair after the first day I realised this is true of all hotels in central B'ham). Pretty noisy too with what the tabloids call 'revellers' though getting a cold on day 2 made have made me (even) more intolerant than usual.

- Obvious drug problems.


Probably also great if you like shopping though mainly the same names you see everywhere and a lack of interesting individual places.


Definitely recommend it for a weekend away that's less than an hour and a half by train.

Isn't it the UK's third-biggest city? That's what the posters said, anyway. Though #1 for quality of life apparently.


After London you can't help noticing the huge amount of empty buildings, including some gorgeous Victorian and disused industrial units slightly outside the centre that could be turned into fantastic housing.

London is the biggest city in Britain. After that it depends how you look at it. Greater Manchester is bigger than Greater Birmingham, but Birmingham is bigger than Manchester.


Of course, that also depend on how you consider London. London is generally seen as one city, but the City of London itself is tiny.

I found a cheaper deal in the end, but out of curiosity I did visit and ask to see a room. They're tiny, more like cabins than rooms, with the length of the bed taking up the entire width of the room. The bathroom is a minuscule wet room, so impossible to shower without soaking everything in there. Might be an amusing and cosy experience but the manager admitted noise can be a problem if the place is full. The apartment rooms might be a better bet, particularly if there are two of you - that tiny room and bathroom would be a romance-killer.

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Latest Discussions

    • “There was an excellent discussion on Newscast last night between the BBC Political Editor, the director of the IFS and the director of More In Common - all highly intelligent people with no party political agenda ” I would call this “generous”   Labour should never have made that tax promise because, as with - duh - Brexit, it’s pretending the real world doesn’t exist now. I blame Labour in no small part for this delusion. But the electorate need to cop on as well.  They think they can have everything they want without responsibilities, costs or attachments. The media encourage this  Labour do need to raise taxes. The country needs it.  Now, exactly how it’s done remains to be seen. But if people are just going to go around going “la la laffer curve. Liars! String em up! Vote someone else” then they just aren’t serious people reckoning with the problem yes Labour are more than a year into their term, but after 14 years of what the Tories  did? Whoever takes over, has a major problem 
    • Messaging, messaging, messaging. That's all it boils down to. There are only so many fiscal policies out there, and they're there for the taking, no matter which party you're in. I hate to say it, but Farage gets it right every time. Even when Reform reneges on fiscal policy, it does it with enough confidence and candidness that no one is wringing their hands. Instead, they're quietly admired for their pragmatism. Strangely, it's exactly the same as Labour has done, with its manifesto reverse on income tax, but it's going to bomb.  Blaming the Tories / Brexit / Covid / Putin ... none of it washes with the public anymore  - it wants to be sold a vision of the future, not reminded of the disasters of the past. Labour put itself on the back foot with its 'the tories fucked it all up' stance right at the beginning of its tenure.  All Lammy had to do (as with Reeves and Raynor etc) was say 'mea culpa. We've made a mistake, we'll fix it. Sorry guys, we're on it'. But instead it's 'nothing to see here / it's someone else's fault / I was buying a suit / hadn't been briefed yet'.  And, of course, the press smells blood, which never helps.  Oh! And Reeve's speech on Wednesday was so drab and predictable that even the journalists at the press conference couldn't really be arsed to come up with any challenging questions. 
    • Niko 07818 607 583 has been doing jobs for us for several years, he is reliable, always there for us, highly recommended! 
    • I am keeping my fingers crossed the next few days are not so loud. I honestly think it is the private, back garden displays that are most problematic as, in general, there is no way of knowing when and where they might happen. For those letting off a few bangers in the garden I get it is tempting to think what's the harm in a few minutes of 'fun', but it is the absolute randomness of sudden bangs that can do irreparable damage to people and animals. With organised events that are well advertised there is some forewarning at least, and the hope is that organisers of such events can be persuaded to adopt and make a virtue of using only low noise displays in future.
Home
Events
Sign In

Sign In



Or sign in with one of these services

Search
×
    Search In
×
×
  • Create New...