Bristol

After a relaxing nights sleep at the Bath spa University hostel Ashwin and me had a nice sumptuous English breakfast that was our fuel for the rest of the day.

We were to take a train from Bath to Bristol, but works on the rail line made us take the Bus, which dropped us to the Bristol Meads train station, photographed below.
We had grand plans for Bristol and the morning did not unfold in the way we expected. Next to the train station is the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum and it was our plan to start the visit of Bristol by visiting this museum. Its only after waiting until 10 that we realised that the museum would not open since they are shifting to London.. Grrr...
We then caught a bus and headed to the Harbour front where we spent a little time walking around the river side and looking enviously at all the lovely yachts.


We had come to the harbour front to visit the Wildwalk - an indoor botanical garden which recreates a tropical forest in the heart of Bristol. But unfortunately for us this too was closed because they were sprucing it up for the summer tourist season. We sat beside the fountain wondering what to do next.
From where we were sitting we could see houses atop a high hill, we wondered how Bristol would look like from there and decided to trek to that place. Looking into the map, we realised the Bristol zoo was located somewhere in that direction and headed there.
It was a long steep climb. Sometimes I felt that we should have taken a bus, but clicking photographs of the steep road we climbed was never so fun.


We treated our self's with photographs and a mouthful of water after every steep climb. It was a 30 minute of steep walk and we sometimes wondered if the walk would be worth it. We were heading towards Clifton.....
As we were approaching the zoo, we came across a beautiful view, this one of the Clifton High school, the scene was so beautiful that we stood there for quite sometime. It was hard to believe that this was a school.
Closer view of the school...

We entered the Bristol Zoo and I must admit that although it has a wonderful collection of animals and is very educative, the zoo did not appeal to us. May be because of the artificial kind of feel ( it was too clean to be associated with animals ) but it sure is a very nice way to teach children about animals and they have almost every thing from Lion to a housefly, from a Okapi to mole rats and from Seals to dart frogs.
The one that I liked a lot was feeding of the seals, I had never seen seals before and feeding I had seen only on the tele. We did get a bit hungry looking at the big chunks of fish these seals were being fed with.
Well after eating a chocolate bar from the vending machine we came out of the zoo and we had to still see the houses on the cliffs which was the reason we were here. We kept following our instincts and walked across the beautiful country side. The walk was very rejuvenating and we kept walking through these tunnel of trees as the sun kept setting on us.
We walked about 10 minutes in this alleyway of trees and I wonder how the place will look in Summer when the trees are filled with green Foliage.
The streets where we walked were lined by beautiful Victorian styled mansions and it sure seemed like a place for the cream of Bristol's affluent people. Below is the photograph of the Christ Church at Clifton.
As we reached the end of our steep climb, we were greeted by this wonderful view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The view was so grandeur that all our tiredness vanished and it seemed the visit to Bristol was truly worth every penny.
( The flare in the above photograph is caused because of the internal refraction of sunlight in the camera lens, since the rays enter the lens at an angle. It was just by chance it happened and I like it so much that I decided to post this one over the other ones without the flare)

On the steep slope of the hill we spotted many people ( even children) playing slide. They were sitting on top of the smooth rock and were sliding down the hill. It was quite amazing to see it. We walked on the bridge and loved the wonderful view the bridge provided.
The building on the cliff is the Clifton Observatory and houses a camera Obscura, it also has a passage that leads to a cave in the middle of the cliff from where one can get a magnificent view of the bridge.
Photograph from the other end of the bridge.
We finally had the view of Bristol that we came searching for, it was simply breathtaking
A view of the bridge from another side.
The massive wires that hold the bridge.

The Sun was setting as we finished looking at the bridge and began our descent down to bristol. One last glance at the bridge and it looked even more prettier with the sun playing tricks with shadows.

As we reached the City centre we passed across the SS Great Britain. The ship was designed in 1843 and served for 43 years as an ocean liner. After being damaged in 1886 she was converted to a cargo ship and has been in Bristol from 1970 and is today a Museum. It was too late for us to visit her that day.


After a long fun filled walk we rested at the waterfront watching people play in the night light.

After a nice unwinding hour we had a big pizza and headed back to bath- from where we went back to Reading.
Historically speaking Bath has always outshined Bristol and we felt it continues to do so, the Modernity of Bristol has failed to outshine the beauty and elegance of Bath.
We had two lovely days of outing- living like two free birds, going where we wanted to heading to where our instincts dictated and mostly eating and drinking what we just felt like. These were some of the best days of our life's.