An exceptional day in Bristol!
We all slept in and woke rested after the stressful end of the day yesterday. I got up first and caught up on email, and when S and H woke, we had a bit of a lazy morning. I took a run out for coffee and groceries and ended up finding a student art exhibition at the local university.
After we got cleaned up, we headed out to explore Bristol. Our first stop was St. Nicholas Market, which is a legendary food stall/market that happens to be closed on Sundays (whoops!). Plus, even though the day started with bright sun and puffy clouds, by the time we got to the market, drizzle had set in. H was unimpressed.
We hung out under the covered roof of the market until the drizzle passed and continued to explore the town. Bristol has a long history as a maritime center, so there's a fair amount of old buildings that were constructed with plenty of money.
Plus, since there's a naval history and it's a college town, there's a strong anti-establishment sentiment. That means lots of tattoos, graffiti, and piercings.
Relatedly, Bristol is also Banksy's hometown, and there are bits of their work around town, such as this message painted on the loading door of a university library:
When the next rainshower passed over, we found a board game cafe and introduced H to Forbidden Island, which she enjoyed (but didn't quite understand fully). When the sun came out again, we meandered our way to the main section of town, where we rode a ferris wheel and lamented that the kids science center was closed for repairs.
From there, it was a short walk and a shorter ferry across the river to the SS Great Britain, a dry-docked ship that was an engineering marvel when it was build. It's dry docked in the very place where it was built, and the whole thing has been turned into a museum.
H was very excited to swab the deck, but does she ever 'swab the floors' at home? Nooooooooooo.
Because the ship was in dry dock, we could go below and explore the outside of the hull!
Once we finished up with the ship, we took a ferry back across the Avon, grabbed some gelato, and then began the walk back to the airbnb. We passed through Bristol College,
then into Brandon Hill, a luxuriously green park full of hills, climbing structures (this being a maritime town, most of the play structures have a heavy rigging theme),
and Cabot tower!
After climbing up to Cabot Tower, we headed for dinner and then back to the airbnb, where H got a bath and S and I are current planning tomorrow's adventures.
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