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!

Life in Bristol: Update 1

Like I did when I was living in Chile, I'm going to write some posts about life in Bristol while I'm here. I've already seen quite a few interesting places around the city and beyond, and so it makes sense to put them on this blog.

So far I have mixed feelings about living here. I like my job - although it's not that similar to what I was doing at the marketing agency I worked at in Malta, it's within the general area of marketing. I work in the French market and get to use my French every day, which I'm really happy about. My colleagues are also really nice, and I enjoy my days in the office, which is located in quite a picturesque part of the city.

But I guess I just didn't really imagine myself ending up in Bristol - a city less than an hour away from where I grew up - after having lived in different places around the world. I had hopes of getting a job somewhere on the continent after my internship in Malta, but there weren't that many opportunities available that were suitable for me and my experience. Although I did get an interview for a job in Berlin, I realised during said interview that it wasn't really what I was looking for, and I didn't go further in the application process anyway.

When I was offered my current job, I was given the choice of working in London, Bristol or fully remotely, and although my heart wanted London, I went with my head and chose Bristol, based on the fact that my salary would have been the same in both cities. Besides, I'd always liked Bristol, and considered it to be my 3rd favourite city in England, after London and Bath. 

My Nana and my two great aunties all lived in the Bristol area, and I always enjoyed coming to visit them and found it entertaining to drive into and through the city. Going towards the city from the M32, you pass the Dower House (a big yellow castle), the interestingly-designed BT Tower, the Shah Jahal Jame Mosque, which looks like a Middle Eastern palace, and finally some colourful and very Nordic-looking apartment buildings. And then as you go through the city itself, you encounter some of the best street art on the planet, and more interesting and colourful buildings, which look like they could come from various places around the world. I always particularly liked going past the Bristol Royal Infirmary with its colourful rings! It was also nice to visit the area where my Nana lived, which has a little castle monument and a row of white houses that look like they're from a Greek island.

So I thought that I would like living in Bristol more than I have so far. While I like some parts of the city, I'm finding it a bit grim and depressing at times. It also feels like a bit of a setback to have gone from living in a really nice apartment with my partner on the other side of the world just over six months ago, and spending the summer working in the Mediterranean, to now be living in a flatshare in a city near where I grew up, at 28 years of age.

So I don't really see myself being here in the long-term. But it hasn't been all bad! I have visited some nice places in and around the city over the last couple of months, and I'm going to share them here today...

The Centre and Harbourside

This part of the city, with its tall townhouses and many boats, looks like it could be located somewhere like the Netherlands or the Nordic countries.

Bag of Nails

I've been to several cat cafés but this is the first ever cat pub I've been to! When my friend Sophie came to visit me in Bristol, we went for a drink here and loved seeing the adorable kitties!

The Clifton Suspension Bridge

The Clifton Suspension Bridge is definitely the most iconic sight to see in Bristol. I had been across it in the car, but had never had the chance to have a proper look at it before. So, I went on a walk there a couple of weeks after arriving in Bristol, and crossed the bridge on foot. The views of the Avon Gorge below are really incredible, and to make things even better, I met a lovely cat sitting next to the bridge!

There is a free museum on the other side of the bridge, in the village of Leigh Woods in Somerset, which was interesting to visit. It has lots of information about how the bridge was designed and built - it's amazing how complex it is.

Batida Restaurant

I went to this Latin American restaurant with my parents when they dropped me back in Bristol one day, and we all really liked it. It has some great Mexican and Argentinian food, super nice décor, and very catchy Latin music! Going there was a nice reminder of my times living in that part of the world. 😊

Castle Park

My partner Claudio encouraged me to go to this park, as it was a place he saw on the Chilean travel programme City Tour on Tour. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a castle anymore (the park is built on the ruins of Bristol Castle) but it's a very picturesque park. Here you can find St Peter's Church, which was bombed during World War II. There are also some nice views over the river, which also remind me a bit of continental Europe.

Cabot Tower and Brandon Hill Park

Another iconic place to visit in Bristol is Cabot Tower, which is located in Brandon Hill Park. This tower is 32 metres high and over a hundred years old. It's quite a claustrophobic climb to get up to the viewing points near the top of the tower (there's a second, even narrower staircase that goes right to the top, but I didn't feel brave enough for it!), but the views from the top across the rest of the city are quite spectacular.

Bath

One of the nice things about living in Bristol is that it's right next to Bath, so it's easy to pop over there for a day trip or a few hours. I met up with my parents there a couple of weeks ago for a bit of shopping and lunch, and afterwards I went on a big walk around the city. Bath's always been one of my favourite places to explore, and spending a day there really was a nice escape from the worries of everyday life.

Severn Beach

Another thing I like about living in Bristol is the suburban railway that goes between Severn Beach and Bristol Temple Meads. There's a station on the line that's about a five minute walk from where I'm living, so it's easy for me to get to Bristol Temple Meads and then on towards other places. But a couple of weeks ago, I decided to go to the other end of the line and visit Severn Beach. It is more of a stretch of mud and pebbles next to the Severn Estuary rather than an actual "beach", but it was good to be out somewhere more peaceful and rural. I enjoyed seeing the two Severn Bridges, looking across to Wales on the other side, and seeing all the cute dogs out for their Sunday afternoon walk!

Between the 1920s and the 1960s, Severn Beach was actually a very popular summer holiday destination for people in the local area. As it's not exactly an area where you can swim and sunbathe, they built a massive swimming pool, a fun fair, and many hotels and cafés. But once more and more people started to get their own cars, they began going on holiday further afield, and Severn Beach became much less popular. Now there isn't much there anymore in the way of entertainment.

However, there is a nice café called Shirley's Café, where I went after my long walk for a vegan chocolate cake and a mug of tea! It was a nice, retro kind of place (with a cute dog next door!) and I'll definitely try to go back at some point.

Some other nice buildings and places I've seen around Bristol!

Overall, it has been hard to adjust to life in Bristol, and I think the cold, dark weather we're having at the moment definitely isn't helping. But there are things to like about living here - I don't know how long I'll stay here, but I'm going to try to make the best of it. 😊