Josh and I were lucky to be invited to stay at the Radisson Blu Birmingham Hotel on Monday night. We had the day off work, Christmas shopped until our hands hurt and ate a lot of Nandos chicken. Come night time, we were ready to see what the hotel had in store for us, and I was excited to snuggle down.
Upon arrival, we were greeted by a friendly receptionist who told us that our stay was complimentary and we would receive a wonderful breakfast the next morning. Our room was on the 16th floor of the building and we used our special key card to travel up to our floor. I was amazed at how big the room actually was and I don’t think the photographs does it justice. The first thing I did was jump onto the bed and I melted into the matress. It was like sleeping on a cloud that night. Staff had also left us some treats, hot chocolates and bottles of water to enjoy during our stay. The view from our room was pretty spectacular.
After settling in, we took to nibbling on our treats and drank hot chocolate. As a main priority – I ran myself a nice hot bath which was super nice after a day of shopping. The hotel uses top quality bathing products (thisworks is one of my favourite brands, they must have known I was coming) and the bathroom itself was spotlessly white and extremely spacious. I love how minimal the design of both the room and the bathroom is. They even provide a kettle and an espresso machine. What I did enjoy most of the night was looking out of our bay window and watching the cars zoom past on their way home from work. It felt really cosy up there.
At 7pm, we freshened up and headed down to the Filini Italian Restaurant on level 1. Josh and I were given a couple of drinks vouchers which we used on glasses of wine with our meal. The entire setting of the place was extremely calming and they decorated the windows with dangling fairy lights. The whole place just seems so quaint and Chrismassy. It was very quiet when we walked in and there must have been only around 10 people seated. Gentle music was playing and most people were minding their business; reading books while they ate, sipped on glasses of wine and champagne or chatted quietly with their companions. The waitress was extremely pleasant, attentive but not too overbearing and our food was served quickly.
We were given a bread board with olives to begin with, then we ordered sour dough bread with clams which were extremely salty but delicious on such a cold winter night. For mains, I ordered Pacherri with Shallot Puree with crispy panchetta and Josh had the Salami pizza with parmesan fries. I was expecting just typical hotel food to arrive at our table, but both of our meals were presented extremely well and you could taste how it was cooked from fresh. Josh and I soon slipped into a food coma and drank several glasses of wine.
We must’ve slept ever so well, because the next thing I knew it was morning again. The sky was still dark but the beam of dawn shone through our window. This made it ever so difficult to get up that morning and I really didn’t want to leave the bed which felt like sleeping on a cloud. A continental breakfast starts every morning at 6:30am but we were happy to eat shortly after 7. The breakfast buffet in the Radisson in my opinion is extremely impressive. Every bit of breakfast filling was continually topped up and they served fresh pots of tea to our table. We helped ourselves to orange juice and both had a full English.
We had such a wonderful experience at the Radisson Blu hotel and I am so grateful for the experience. We enjoyed the experience so much, we have even booked the Radisson Hotel in Berlin for this coming January for our anniversary break (that one has a huge fish tank in the middle of the hotel lobby!). However, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help from a certain wonderful PR lady. It was so nice to relax and to unwind on a week night like, even though we both had work the next morning.
Please note: We paid for our main meals & this blog post is in collaboration with Radisson Blu. If you would like to book yourself a stay, you can find more information by clicking here.