More about Bristol
I'm doing my best to catch up on the past few weeks, but this blog still seems to be about two weeks behind. However I leave Bristol in 3 days and will then have regular internet access again, so hopefully I'll get it up to date then.
Two weekends ago (12-13 august) was the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. Richard and Hilary came down from London and we spent the weekend exploring Bristol and trying to see the hot air balloons. Unfortunately the weather over the whole 4 days of the fiesta was such that they never managed a mass launch and the few balloons that did go up each morning were blown south and away from Bristol. So the only time we got to see balloons was at the night glow on the saturday night. That was fantastic - about 15-20 balloons tethered to the ground and then they opened up their burners in different sequences in time to music. A little cheesy but still lots of fun and really interesting to see.
During the day on Saturday we did a bit of sightseeing around Bristol. first we went up to Cabot Tower which is a nice view out over Bristol centre. The tower was constructed in honour of John Cabot who sailed from Bristol to America to help establish a colony there. I didn't go all the way to the top of the tower, just to the first lookout points, but there was still a reasonable view from there.
After climbing the tower and walking around we had a very long lunch and then went to Wildwalk @Bristol. This is part of the science and discovery centre in Millenium Square and we were expecting it to be interesting but mostly for young children. However we all found it much better than we thought it would be and spent over two hours in there. Considering the price of it (expensive) it needed to be good. The Wildwalk looks at nature and ecology etc, and has parts that are both fairly standard museum / science centre type set up, but it also has a great big tropical greenhouse that you can walkthrough as part of the discovery of different ecologies. They had lots of tree-ferns in the first section of this greenhouse which was nice. Good to see some things from home again. They also had lots of birds and butterflies for natural pest control. Some of the butterflies were quite large, and we were able to get some pretty good photos of some of them.
After such a full day on Saturday, we decided to start a little later on sunday and just explore Clifton. So we went to the Clifton Suspension Bridge and saw the cresecent again, and had lunch at an interesting little cafe tucked away down a side street. There wasn't really time for much more, but it was a really nice day just walking around and seeing Clifton again. It really is a nice part of Bristol.
So while we didn't do lots over the weekend, it was very pleasant and it was great to spend some time with Richard and Hilary again and show them around.
Two weekends ago (12-13 august) was the Bristol Balloon Fiesta. Richard and Hilary came down from London and we spent the weekend exploring Bristol and trying to see the hot air balloons. Unfortunately the weather over the whole 4 days of the fiesta was such that they never managed a mass launch and the few balloons that did go up each morning were blown south and away from Bristol. So the only time we got to see balloons was at the night glow on the saturday night. That was fantastic - about 15-20 balloons tethered to the ground and then they opened up their burners in different sequences in time to music. A little cheesy but still lots of fun and really interesting to see.
During the day on Saturday we did a bit of sightseeing around Bristol. first we went up to Cabot Tower which is a nice view out over Bristol centre. The tower was constructed in honour of John Cabot who sailed from Bristol to America to help establish a colony there. I didn't go all the way to the top of the tower, just to the first lookout points, but there was still a reasonable view from there.
After climbing the tower and walking around we had a very long lunch and then went to Wildwalk @Bristol. This is part of the science and discovery centre in Millenium Square and we were expecting it to be interesting but mostly for young children. However we all found it much better than we thought it would be and spent over two hours in there. Considering the price of it (expensive) it needed to be good. The Wildwalk looks at nature and ecology etc, and has parts that are both fairly standard museum / science centre type set up, but it also has a great big tropical greenhouse that you can walkthrough as part of the discovery of different ecologies. They had lots of tree-ferns in the first section of this greenhouse which was nice. Good to see some things from home again. They also had lots of birds and butterflies for natural pest control. Some of the butterflies were quite large, and we were able to get some pretty good photos of some of them.
After such a full day on Saturday, we decided to start a little later on sunday and just explore Clifton. So we went to the Clifton Suspension Bridge and saw the cresecent again, and had lunch at an interesting little cafe tucked away down a side street. There wasn't really time for much more, but it was a really nice day just walking around and seeing Clifton again. It really is a nice part of Bristol.
So while we didn't do lots over the weekend, it was very pleasant and it was great to spend some time with Richard and Hilary again and show them around.
posted by bronwyn | 1:49 PM
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