It took a while, but in August AND September, we finally ventured out of Brum to pay a visit to Bristol and Ludlow, respectively. Almost immediately, we wished we hadn't! Both places were so much nicer than Brum, it was hard to bring ourselves to leave.
Bristol was a one and a half hour trip from Brum, and the train station is absolutely HUGE! You could easily mistake it for a station for a major city like Sydney or London, it was so massive. I don't really know much about Bristol, so maybe it needs to be that big, but it seemed a bit excessive. Having never been there before, we left the train station, and being on a tight budget, decided to wing it - that is, we walked in the direction everyone else seemed to be going. Luckily, there's plenty of signposting and we managed to work our way over to the town centre, stopping off at the St Mary Redcliffe cathedral for some happy snaps. It's a magnificent building, and the first really ornate church I've seen here, but the tombstones in the flooring freaked me out a bit - I've never seen that before!
Anyway, after taking in the church and it's surrounds, we continued our search for the town centre and a tourist info centre. It was still very early, so we figured we had plenty of time to find the art gallery, where the Banksy exhibition was held (our original purpose for the trip!) The weather was fine, and we just mosied on down to the info centre and grabbed a map and some directions, then set off again. The art gallery wasn't far; it was up a steep hill with trendy boutique shops on either side, but there was no time to look now - we were on a mission.
Finally, we found the art gallery and from across the road, could see a mass of people waiting in a queue in a nearby side street. Holy cow, we thought, that queue is massive! But we'd made the trip to Bristol especially so we weren't going to turn back now. We crossed the road to join the queue...and 20 minutes, a couple of streets, and another hill later, we reached the end of the line. To say the line was long is the understatement of the year; to say it was like queueing for a ride at Disneyland isn't even close; this was the queue from HELL itself. We waited for a little while, debating whether to stay or go, when we overheard some newcomers to the end of the line say that it was an 8 hour wait from here. Catch ya later, Banksy! Opting to do something other than wait in a queue all day, we headed back into the town centre to the shops we'd missed and started on plan B - touristy stuff.
Bristol is a really nice town. As we came back down the hill, we found a beautiful park with an amazing view, and a very tall tower, reminiscent of the evil queen's in the film, The Brothers Grimm. Squirrels were running around as well, which was so cool! It was my first time seeing so many, just out and about, going about their squirrely business.
We also came across some of Banksy's work scattered around town, so in the end, we did see some of his stuff. Another sight of note was The Golden Hynd, but I can't remember why it's famous anymore...
Anyway, whilst it's probably not a must-see for most people travelling in England, I liked Bristol - It reminded me a lot of Melbourne!
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