Fantastical Chocolate Festival

So at the end of the summer Facebook kept bringing up a Fantastical Chocolate Festival ad. Looked ahmazing, a bit scammy at first to be honest but it's touring the country and surely with the first few festivals word would get out, right? So we booked to go to the Birmingham one in October. 

I was expecting a trade show like festival. A place you would go stall to stall and taste + buy all kinds of chocolatey chocolate :) Wouldn't you? This is their description on the FB pages: Artisan Chocolate Traders 🍫 Tasting Stations 😋 Themed Walkabout Characters & Story Corners 📚 Singalong Entertainment 🎭

Sound great doesn't it? Especially with pics like these to promote it :) and no bad press on it  - quite a few events took place before Birmingham. Was super excited!!!!!

WRONG!!!

We got there and... :D Well first of all they screwed up our booking and put us on the more expensive evening wine and cheese festival, which was supposed to be the same as the day choc festival just cheese stalls added. OK not bad not bad at all :D I love wine and cheese, so an unexpected perk :) BUUUUUUUUUT when we got in there was 1!!!!!! YES ONE chocolate stall :D Basically any supermarket has a bigger selection... no artisan traders, or chocolate fountains or themed anything... Then in the main hall there was mostly wine... you could only taste a little sip at a time, otherwise £5 a small glass.... hmmmmmmm.... only one tasting stall so the queue was horrendous, one cheese stall, you could have a little taste of the cheeses, queue was horrendous... one stall to buy crepes and waffles, no tasting there at all, and one stall for paninis I think, didn't quite understand. 4 tables at the middle seating about 10 people each. A singer and that's it :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D You call this a festival??????????????????? What the hell????? :D EVERYONE was complaining :D And the day just choc festival was no better apparently, some poor bugger bought tickets to both :D 

Yes, we got our money back :D

I still had a great weekend in Birmingham though, got SUSHI yum, chocolate form Debenhams, that had a bigger and more interesting selection :D Mr. Special actually said at the time I was choosing what to buy to don't be crazy we're going to a choc festival later, you'll have plenty of interesting things to choose from in there. LOL

Also there was a little FREE chocolate fair in Brindley place that we low key slagged off - Imagine if we had booked to come and see this... Lol it was better than the one we paid for :D

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...

Kicked out

Even before I actually moved here and was only just looking at accommodation in my soon to be home I was amazed at how close to the seafront the houses are! And a lot of them are student accommodation. Now I think it was more expensive to live on the seafront and that's why I didn't opt for it for my first year here (#poorlife)  but I do remember watching a video tour of one of the rooms and the view was ahmazing!

Now for a few brief days my dream had come true, 6 years later. 

Funny story actually...

Came home from work one day and Mr. Special said he had had a phone call from some guy asking if they could arrange a viewing of our flat to insulate it and add proper heaters for free, all he had to do is prove that he does live here. I thought it was a scam... What the hell? First of all why is this not coming through our letting agent??? Some scheme to make sure all flats are compliant to a new legislation forced soon. Again where is our letting agent? Are they aware of this? What the hell? You're just letting some random guy come check out our flat, give him your identification and proof of address? That's just asking for trouble?

Ok the next day our letting agent confirmed they are aware of the scheme and it is legit and they want us to go ahead with it. The free scheme can only be used by residents, not letting agents and that's why they contacted us directly. Still fishy though... the letting agent could've at least given us a heads up! And it was all happening so fast! Yeap we'll come do your flat next week! What already? Most of the block was to be done on the same day. Ok.... Do we need to move anything? No, they'll work around the furniture! What? They'll insulate inside around the furniture? Doesn't really make sense but ok if you said don't move anything we won't. They were only supposed to be there one day.

Big mistake... OBVIOUSLY there was dust EVERYWHERE! 

And no, they weren't even half done on the first day! Sooooooooooooo DamDamDam. Come home from work that day and can't even sit down in my own home... By 4pm it was clear we can't possibly stay here for the night... Thanks for the freaking heads up! Pfffft "No need to move anything at all" How about move ourselves out of the flat!?! The letting agency booked us (5 flats?) rooms in a hotel. In a hotel on the seafront! One of the fanciest hotels in town! :) Oh Yah not bad at all... Unlucky though that I had to work and couldn't enjoy that view all day long :( I looooove bay windows. Especially on the seafront!

We ended up staying for 2 nights. Didn't really want to go back to be honest.

The carpets were dusty, there was dust everywhere. If only we had been told about the scale of the job I would've packed everything or covered everything at least. The carpets were meant to be professionally cleaned but we are still waiting (obviously not with the dust, we cleaned it ourselves). And we are still waiting for the heaters to be put in as well. Rumour has it that it's a BIG job as the meters are downstairs so they have to do some rewiring and possibly rip the carpets up... Could do with new carpets actually :D I hope they let us know this time so we an move all valuables away from dust damage!

Oooh a bit of drama as well: upstairs flat is apparently nearly inhabitable and the workmen nearly refused to carry out any work in there before it got cleaned. There is a huge person living there, who doesn't work and only plays on his playstation days on end... Frequenting the shop every day to basically buy crap... big multibags of crisps, KFC etc, not proper food and as they now realised is not the cleanest person in the world by far. So they called our usual handyman to clean the flat :D He was sulky AF! Saying that he could've done the insulation job and done a better job as well instead of being a cleaner! :D

Ttyl ;)
Jazzz...

Austria

First proper trip of the year took us to Austria as we wanted SNOW. I love snow :) and if it's going to be cold it might as well have snow as well otherwise what's the point? Only snow makes the cold tolerable :D

We based ourselves in Linz, which is halfway between Vienna and Salzburg. An hour each way. Aaaaand don't be a muppet like Mr. Special and pay an extortionate amount for train tickets! There are two rail companies ÖBB and Westbahn. And yes we did our research and knew how much the fare was supposed to be... In theory. In reality we walked to the train station found the ticket desk (they gave us a yellow tulip as it was Valentines day! So cute :)) and paid A LOT of money... Mr. Special did question it and the answer he got was that it was an online company with no ticket desks and they do not know how we could buy those tickets... oook... So we had an hour for the train, the other company had two trains in that time and after the first one had been. Mr. Special went to the office to try and get a refund and get tickets to the other train. I was waiting outside and found an information board that said we could buy the tickets from the train or through an app on our phone. Easy breezy. Then he came back and said they were happy to give him a refund. :)

You think he took it?????? OMG he didn't because the man didn't know how to buy tickets to the other train and you get a fine if you board the train without a ticket. So he got scared and blerped... What a weirdo...

So anyway we did finally get to Salzburg - the town of the Sound of the Music: 

First up Mirabell Palace. Unfortunately inside is only a magnificent staircase and a hall where they have concerts at night. I was hoping for multiple rooms etc.

The way to the old town took us over a bridge with locks attached to its railings.

After walking about around town finding out that Mozart's birth place is now a Spar, finding a good Austrian place to eat (schnitzel obvs) we made our way to the top of town to the Hohensalzburg Castle. 

View from the roof, you could only get there with an audioguide tour and a group... We happened to get a school group on our tour... Fun... and the first part of the tour focused too long on the artwork in the first room... But the rest of it was much better (and quicker).

Back down there was a man at the top of the world.

Next day we knew better and got the cheap train tickets to Vienna. We actually bought them on the train and he said we'd get them even cheaper if buying from a Tabac :D

A photo diary from our day: it was all great all good and all cold :D

Third day took us to the little town of Hallstatt. Easily the highlight of the trip! How can you not fall in love with this little gem?

To get there we had to take a little boat trip across the lake €5 return trip. While there we just wandered around, took in the lovely views, got lost on the maze of streets halfway up a mountain range. My perfect day :)

What's up kitty cat?

Views for days man!

One of the biggest sights is the Skywalk viewing platform that you have to take a (rather expensive) funicular to. There are salt mines up there as well but unfortunately they were closed for the off season. When we got there we found ourselves in a big cloud, obvs not the best time to be on a viewing platform on top of the town.

After an extensive photo shoot and fighting for the best spot with another couple (plus a few others but they only took one or two photos and then left :D) we looked around and voila the cloud had cleared! :) Now that's what I'm talking about! :)

Last visit in the town was the infamous bone house. Due to the fact that the cemetery is quite small and room is an issue there was a time when bones were dug up after 10 years of being buried, painted and decorated and put on display. There are about 1200 skulls in this little room.

The morning of our last day we went to the Alice in Wonderland exhibition which was strange as promised. It started with a virtual reality device and then after took us through a church with every room decorated.

Ttyl ;)

Jazzz...