Advertisement
On Sunday I went to Bristol with some folks in a car. I had volunteered to be the navigator, and when I told people this beforehand, Brits and Americans alike looked at me with wide eyes and just laughed. I half-expected some of them to shake my hand and say, "Well, nice knowin' ya."
The weather Sunday was weird. That's the only way I can describe it. It would be pouring one minute, then bright and sunny and gorgeous the next, and then pouring while bright and sunny, and you never knew when it would switch. However, we set off anyway.
Navigating. I had a detailed map showing every little street in Bristol. I had hand-drawn directions to where we were going, eliminating all the extraneous detail side streets. Nevertheless, we ended up going off in the wrong direction. I usually have a good sense of direction, but I swear down was up in Bristol. The roundabouts are what messed me up. Either the roundabout would be huge, so I couldn't see it's full scope and therefore think it was a turn, or it would be a normal intersection with a one foot wide faded white circle
painted in the middle and I'd miss it. Things that looked connected would actually be dead ends, streets changed direction, and there were practically no street signs. Or if there were, they didn't match what was on the map. Add in construction and driving on the left-hand side of the road, which I'm still not used to...
Our first stop was the British Commonwealth Museum. It told the story of 500 years of the Brits running amok and claiming things while trying to save the indigenous savages from themselves. And this being the British empire, it pretty much covered the whole world. The section on North America talked about sugar and slaves, the Northern Territories had pelts, the China part had opium, the Indians, the South Pacific, Australia, Africa, etc, etc, etc. The artifacts were interesting and well-kept, but not jaw-droppingly astounding. However, this was a very, very good museum. It was very informative. I don't know what I expected from a museum talking about the submission of the world's people, located in the country of the ones that dominated, but it was very straightforward. There was no trying to explain things away or justify any sort of behavior. Nor
did it gloss over the more shameful parts. It wasn't glorifying them either - just very straightforward.
The changing exhibit upstairs was all about slavery, it having been ended in Britain 200 years ago. Again, a very direct exhibit that neither glorified nor spent all of its time condemning. I think the facts and the exhibits spoke for themselves and conveyed the horror of it all without the museum needing to editorialize. There was also an open debate (with museum guests posting their opinions) about whether Bristol should apologize for slavery or not. Bristol was pretty much the center of the British slave trade.
We next took a harrowing journey to the Llandoger Trow. Before I can tell you what it is, I must emphasize again what a tight ball of nerves I was trying to get us there. We missed a turn (it was supposed to be at a roundabout that was a normal intersection with no street signs and thus unrecognizable) on the way and ended up in a tangle of curving streets. All the ones heading back to where we wanted to go dead ended, and all the other ones led the other direction. I
must say that I am now a fan of urban planning.
Anyway, Llandoger Trow is a beautiful old half-timbered pub. And it's historical, too! (Surprise, surprise.) The pub has been in existence since 1664 and is famous as the place where author Daniel Defoe met Alexander Selkirk, whose personal experiences stranded on an island alone inspried Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe. It is also believed that Robert Louis Stevenson based the Spyglass in Treasure Island on this pub. The first owner started it after he had been sailing a flat-bottom boat, known as a trow, between South Wales and Bristol. Llandogo was a small Welsh village. The pub was bombed in WWII but was rebuilt to what you see in the pictures below. All I know is that when I got there, relieved to have found it, I unclenched my shoulders, spilled out the car, and said, "I need a pint!" I was trying to save room for dinner at what I was told is "the best Mexican restaurant in the UK," so I only had a half pint. Of Guinness. See below for my first Guinness in Britain.
We then made it to the restaurant and home.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Bristol, but I'm slightly scared to go back... I think I'll only do it on foot.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.159s; Tpl: 0.023s; cc: 18; qc: 60; dbt: 0.0685s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb