A quiet day

Today Michelle and I were in Bristol staying with a friend of hers from Oxford, Becca, who showed us around the city a bit. We saw a few nice things, but we also spent a lot of time just hanging out and chatting - which was honestly just what I needed. It was nice to just spend time with people and chat and hang out. As much as I love traveling, two weeks is a lot of time to be constantly on the go, so it's nice to have a down day to chat and hang out a bit.

Bristol is west of London, very close to the coast. I feel like it's a typical English town (though it's pretty large) in the "west country" of England. It had a nice feel to it. Like I said, we didn't see a ton, but what I saw was nice and very British-feeling.

One of Bristol's main attractions is an old suspension bridge that was built in the 19th century. It's built over a gorge and there are some nice views of it from a hill right near Becca's house. We got up late this morning and after a breakfast of English muffins, scrambled eggs, crumpets, and tea (so English), we went out and walked around and across the bridge.

The bridge is apparently a big attraction in England. It's called the Clifton Bridge.

The bridge with a view of the countryside and some of the city beyond it.

More bridge, more city, more gorge.

After checking out the bridge we walked across it over to an estate (now owned by the local government) of a big old manor house. It has hundreds of acres of land that are now open to the public so we just wandered around, saw some deer (there's some kind of deer park on the grounds), and saw this old manor home. Again, it felt very British country-ish to me; very stereotypical in the sense of lots of a land and a manor home. It was nice to wander around.

Entrance to the estate, Ashton Court. I could already tell it was going to be fancy. (It was also in this estate that we had a whole discussion about the words "posh," and "snobby," and "well-off" and the differences between all of them. I didn't really catch it all, though.)

Wandering... 

...still wandering...

An enormous herd of deer. We saw even more later.

The actual house of Ashton Court. I love how brightly colored it was. It's not lived in now, it's just used for private functions; it can be rented out.

Ashton Court.

We wandered around the town a bit after the estate before stopping in a cafe to get tea (oh my goodness, the English really do love tea. Becca asked me if I was tired yet of people asking if I wanted tea). Bristol was a nice town and the area we were in, Clifton Village, was very nice and small-ish feeling, despite the fact that Bristol is a fairly large city. We didn't see a whole lot of the town, but the part I saw was nice. We saw some pretty row houses on a street called a "crescent," so called because it is slightly curved in a U-shape. Apparently it's the largest crescent in Europe.

Experimenting with a black-and-white setting on my camera: balconies of the row houses in Bristol.

The crescent row of all the houses (which were sooo nice) with a very nice view of the countryside and a lot of Bristol.

A shot of the mailbox on the crescent row and a view showing the lower level; those doors on the bottom would have once been used as stables and servant rooms. Now they're basement apartments or garages.

We stopped and had tea in a cute shop and then went back to Becca's with ingredients for dinner. We pretty much just hung out for the evening, cooked dinner, and then went out for some cider to celebrate Michelle's birthday (which is tomorrow). I really had a nice time chatting with Michelle and Becca - we had lots of either fun or stimulating conversations! Even though I've been able to make very good friends in French/France, it's nice to be able to express myself on whatever topic I want to talk about - it's nice not needing to search for words.

Oof, I need to go to sleep, it's already after 1:30 here. Tomorrow we head to Bath for the day and then on to Oxford. I don't want vacation to end!