"Ups and downs" a Bristol Travel Page by Sjalen

We went to Bristol as we were visiting quaint cities in Somerset and thought we couldn't really overlook the main regional hub with its maritime history, Brunel and so on now that we were there. So, we set up a meeting with an old colleague of mine who now lives here and let him show us his city. It turned out to be a great day and Bristol a very positive surprise. It has a reputation for awful housing estates and traffic problems and whilst the latter was certainly true (half the bus ride back to Bath was spent just getting out of Bristol), the city turned out to have a great amount of interesting sights and a lively student atmosphere I did not expect to find in such a big city. Its hilly layout also means that you have interesting views of water and green countryside everywhere. I definately hope to be back some time to see all the museums I missed and enjoy more of the waterfront. As we visited in one of the coldest February months in years, boat trips weren't that appealing...

To steal one of Sabsi's ideas, this Bristol page is one I could have a soundtrack for as I am a great fan of The Men They Couldn't Hang and countless times I've been singing "...if I starved on the streets of Bristol, I starved worse on a Briiiitish ship...". This was another reason why I enjoyed my visit here. Those horror centuries of slave trading and Napoleonic wars fascinate me even though the city looks completely different today, having been bombed to pieces in WWII because of its heavy engineering industry and rebuilt in a sometimes outright eyesore manner. But you can still stroll along the Floating Harbour area and imagine what it might have been like in the days of "empire glory" and try to imagine Bristol's importance to the world.