Life in Bristol: Update 2

This is my second update about life in Bristol and it's also going to be my last! I moved out of the city at the end of last year, and am currently living back at home again, though I'm still commuting into Bristol once a week.

I didn't see a lot more of the city since my first post about life there, but there's a few nice places I managed to get to in November that I want to write about today...

The Downs and Stoke Bishop

I worked on the mornings of the weekend between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but I chose to spend those afternoons doing nice things. On the Saturday afternoon, I decided to walk to where my Nana used to live, in the Stoke Bishop neighbourhood of Bristol. To get there, I passed through the Downs, a huge green space in the city. 

The public toilets on the Downs are probably the prettiest I've ever seen, at least from the outside!

I stopped at The Downs Café, a place I remember driving past in the car when going to visit my Nana. I sat outside with a coffee and a slice of Tunisian orange cake, and despite the cold, it was really nice to sit there in the sun and enjoy my coffee and cake.

Afterwards, I continued on towards Stoke Bishop. The route there is really scenic, passing by lots of big houses, including this one, where the Portuguese novelist Eça de Queiroz once lived.

A little while later, I arrived in Stoke Bishop for the first time in around five years. Nothing has really changed there, except that the Spar is now a Co-op! It was good to see that the Italian restaurant we always used to go to, Ciao, is still going strong.

I love how this area has so many influences from different parts of the world. The row of shops in the picture just below look traditionally English, but the row of whitewashed houses across the road (in the second and third pictures) look straight out of a Greek island, complete with a palm tree. My mum has never liked the lack of architectural uniformity in Bristol compared to cities like Bath and Cheltenham, and always said that the Greek houses look out of place. Personally, I quite like the little reminder of sunnier climes!

It was also fun to visit my "castle"! I know this monument doesn't really look that much like a castle, but as a four-year-old, I thought it did, and the name stuck!

Overall, it was a little bittersweet, but also very nice to be back in Stoke Bishop again. My Nana moved there from Wales in 1999 and lived there until 2018, when she moved into a care home for the last year of her life. We used to go there probably at least once a month, so I have a lot of happy memories of the place!

Perhaps the opportunity won't arise to visit the area again, so I'm glad I made it back there once more while I was living in Bristol. Even though I don't have much fondness for Bristol as a city anymore, I will always have a fondness for Stoke Bishop.

Well Hung Lover by Banksy

It was fun to see this Banksy artwork on my way into the city centre the following day!

Bristol Mural

I also liked seeing this Aardman Animations mural outside Cabot Circus, before going in to do a bit of shopping.

St Mary on the Quay Catholic Church

I'd assumed this Roman-style building was a court, but it's actually a church.

Spike Island

I finished the day off with a nice walk around Spike Island. I think a lot of the architecture on the island has a kind of Dutch/Nordic vibe to it, which I like a lot.

Bristol Beacon

I used to walk past this concert venue on my walk to and from work. It was being refurbished when I moved to Bristol, but at the end of November, it finally reopened. Built in the Bristol Byzantine style, it looks amazing!

So, that brings to a close my (rather short) series of posts about living in Bristol. Unfortunately, it was quite a difficult few months overall, but at least I gave it a try.

I think, deep down, I always knew that being based in Bristol was never quite going to satisfy me. Accepting a job there felt like "settling" for something less than what I really wanted, and was not really the kind of opportunity I hoped I'd get following my marketing internship in Malta. I did try to imagine a future for myself there, but the experience has made me realise that I want my next role to be either based in the London area or abroad.

Now Claudio and I are back living in my parents' house for the time being. It's not really the ideal situation you want to be in when you're in your late 20s and early 30s, but I'm definitely feeling a lot happier and more comfortable here than I was in Bristol. We're currently trying to figure out what our next steps will be, which obviously is quite a challenge, as we're both from different countries and have to think about visas, etc. But I hope that by the end of 2024, we'll both have jobs in a city we both want to live in, and that we'll be able to have our own apartment again. 

Hopefully it can only be onwards and upwards from here!