Sunny Bristol

Finally! Here it is, in a somewhat shortened version. I mean, it's practically ancient history by now!

My trip to Bristol started out on Wednesday the 8th with a flight on Ryan Air from Bratislava's airport. Bratislava, the capitol of Slovakia, is about an hour and a half away from Vienna by bus. It had snowed and rained the day before (crazy weather!), but I was expecting that a country where snow lies on the ground up to 100 days per year would know how to handle the inclement weather. I was proven wrong almost immediately after crossing the Slovak border--the roads appeared as though they hadn't been plowed at all! The bus arrived exactly on time at the airport despite the poor road conditions, but the airport hadn't been cleared out either. My flight was delayed by one hour and 45 minutes, which was enough to blow all my cushion between plane and buses, causing me to miss my bus to Bristol. We were actually lucky though, seeing as another flight that was supposed to take off three hours before ours was still sitting on the ground as we took off. The missed bus to Bristol resulted in me having to buy another ticket at more than three times the price of the first one, which I had purchased online for a special web fare thanks to my friend Gareth's advice on booking bus trips in the UK. I just said "ouch" and forked over the money, while stuffing my invalid ticket back into my bag.

Alanna was waiting for me at the bus stop, waving excitedly. It turns out a girl from her course at uni was on the same bus as me and she thought Alanna was there to see her! Alanna and I had a good laugh over that. It was great to see my little blond pixie & we spent the night talking with Alanna's roommate Cordelia (aka Cordy) about anything and everything.

I got to sleep in and take a long breakfast on Thursday morning while Alanna went to her French class. Upon her return we kicked it into tourist mode and took Bristol by storm. We wandered down Park Street to the Cathedral and then to the river Avon, on which Bristol is located.

Something's funny, but I'm not sure what.

Our goal was the SS Great Britain (see me in sailor cap in an earlier post), which we knew was on the Avon. It ended up being on the other side of the river though, which we didn't realize until we had walked quite a ways towards the mast, which we could see over other buildings lining the shore. There aren't that many bridges over the Avon in Bristol, so we ended up walking to the motorway to cross! We probably walked for about 45 minutes in one direction, so it really wasn't that far, but Alanna had worn her purple suede boots and wasn't properly equipped for walking so far. We finally made it to the right side of the river and around to the ship, which was seriously impressive. It is hailed as the "world's first great ocean liner" and was built in Bristol in the 1840s by a guy named Isambard Kingdom Brunel (bet he got made fun of as a kid!). They've set up the museum so you can not only go on board and walk around the ship, but you can also go into the dry dock and check out the ship's underbelly. After we finished our tour of the ship, we rode a ferry taxi back into the center of Bristol and continued to walk around town, speaking German the whole time, which got us some curious looks.

Thursday evening we met up with Joanne, another former Salzburg assistant, and went out for a few drinks with some of Alanna and Cordy's friends. We were pretty tuckered out from our extensive tour of the town and didn't make it too wild of a night.

Friday was another day for the super tourists. We went from Alanna's place to the Colston Tower, which affords a great view over Bristol. Our next stop was Clifton Village, a neighborhood in Bristol that has a bit of a village feel to it, right down to the local butcher. Shopping was in order and we both came home with excellent sale items. We kept on and visited Brunel's Avon Gorge Suspension Bridge (that Brunel was multi-talented--he also designed railroads) before winding our way through various other neighborhoods to get to Alanna's old apartment and the university. We rounded out the evening with the Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics.

Saturday I returned to London and met up with some of the people I had met through Webster University's soccer tournament the previous December. We went out at Old Street, an up-and-coming area of London. David, an Austrian, suggested we start out the night at the Bavarian Beer House, after which we moved on to several other bars, most of which I don't remember clearly. David, Lauren (my hostess) and I braved the night bus and crawled into our beds at about 5:45am.

I met up with Rohit, a former coworker from NYC, and his wife Jas for brunch the next morning in Kensington, not far from where I got my four hours of sleep. It was great to see them & be in their world for a while. That's the best part about visiting friends.

The return trip was uneventful and on-time, getting me back into Vienna just in time to fall into bed before returning to school the next morning. The End!