Bristol

After leaving Ireland we headed back to England, staying a few nights on the south west coast at Bristol.

Bristol is a city of contrasts.  Historically, it was one of the three most important cities in England because it was a centre for trade (sadly, including the slave trade). Consequently, there are some very old buildings to be found in Bristol and way to many to put in this blog!

However, there has also been a huge amount of development around the harbour and parts of Bristol are incredibly modern.

The harbour is the real life blood of Bristol and some people actually live on houseboats on the inner harbour.

Bristol is also the home of Wallace and Gromit!

And also home to some very impressive street art - which is everywhere!

Banksy is a very famous graffiti artist and he is meant to be responsible for this one which is painted just above the water line on a ship anchored in the harbour.

Bristol is also famous for its blue glass and blue cabs.

We also visited St Mary's Church of England, Redcliffe which has some of the oldest surviving stained glass windows in all of England. Parts of the church date to the 12th century.

The windows have survived because they were blocked up during the Reformation.  Some of the windows have been left that way!

Some other stained glass is not quite so old - but it is still very beautiful!

And the wording of this memorial stone in one of the crypts just amused me! Check out the date and year of death!

We also visited the Clifton Suspension bridge which spans the Avon Gorge.

The suburb of Clifton is a bit like Double Bay in Sydney and has some lovely boutiques and wine bars.  I just loved the display in this cake shop window.

We sure packed quite a bit into our three days here!