Bristol City Museum = Fantastic Family Fun

Advantages: WARNING- LONG REVIEW. Loads to see and do for adults and kids.
Disadvantages: WARNING LONG REVIEW. Poor disabled facilites and cafe.

...My other half has been on holiday this week, combine that with our 4th anniversary, Mothers day and an in-service day at my sons school it was the perfect opportunity for some good old family fun, among the day trips we took was a visit to Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery. It's a great attraction for us living in Bristol and with free entry it's perfect for our ever expanding family as it doesn't break the bank. Getting to the museum is simple enough for us, as we're local, but the parking is a real problem, being situated in the middle of busy Queens Road, at the top of Park Street, in Clifton, it is near impossible to find a space nearby and we always park in the Frogmore street NCP and walk the 5 minute trip up the road, past the university buildings and into the museum. Bristol City Museum & Art gallery is set in a beautiful baroque...

piggypine 05.03.2008 · Read review
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Review of Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery

  Bristol Museum: Much More Than Boring Old Plates

Advantages: Educational, fun and free.
Disadvantages: Long, long queues until the end of August 2009.

...or taxi if you arrive by train. Bristol?s City Museum and Art Gallery (to give it its official title) is housed in an Edwardian building in the Baroque style in the Clifton district, a gift to the city from the tobacco baron, Sir William Henry Wills. It sits grandly between the university?s towering Wills Memorial Building and Browns restaurant, which occupies another impressive building; this one being in a combination of Bristol Byzantine and Venetian Gothic Revival styles (loosely based on the Doge?s Palace!) and which was itself once home to the museum. They make a stately trio. The building dates back to 1905 and the arched entrance on Queen?s Road used to span a driveway that once allowed people to step straight from their carriages into the museum without being troubled by rain on wet days. Only a few years ago glass entrance...

Mitsudan 23.08.2009 (31.08.2009) · Read review
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Review of Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery

Excellent Exhibits in Bristol

Advantages: World-class collections; great displays for children; free of charge
Disadvantages: Needs easier access to upper floors

...Having recently visited Portsmouth City Museum and Art Gallery, I was interested to see how its counterpart in Bristol compared. I expected that perhaps it would be a grander affair, and I was right. Whereas Portsmouth concentrates mainly on local history and art, Bristol, whilst giving prominence to local artists and exhibits, has world-class displays in its galleries. The museum is housed in an imposing three-storey Edwardian building; the stairs are not steep and there is a lift to certain areas on the upper floors, but you do have to call an attendant to operate the lift. How easy it is to do this I do not know. However, if you are at all interested in Ancient Egypt you are in for a treat, as there is a new display on the ground floor. This is where we started our visit. The Egyptian exhibits here are based on the themes...

denella 30.06.2008 · Read review
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Review of Bristol City Museum & Art Gallery

Nice pair of Bristols!

Advantages: Good location. Bristol is better than it sounds at first.
Disadvantages: None really, but the afternoon barmaid let the team down.

...For the uninitiated, there?s such a thing as ?Cockney Rhyming slang?; somewhat unique, I guess, to the UK ? and particularly to the East End of London. Examples include: ?Apples and pairs? ? Stairs; ?Trouble and strife? ? Wife. Bonus question ? what does ?Bristol City? (or a pair of them) evoke? Think carefully! Answers on a postcard, please - although I have to say that, with the huge numbers of young girls walking around in skirts resembling belts, my attention was drawn away from their ?Bristols?. Yep ? I?ve been to Bristol. Hardly a holiday location, but despite my protestations to my beloved to the contrary, it?s actually quite a cosmopolitan place to visit. The scene of race riots (in the St Paul?s region) several years ago, this refreshingly multi-cultural University City doesn?t present a particularly welcoming face...

andymcf 17.08.2003 · Read review
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Review of Marriott Hotel City Centre, Bristol

Bristol City Shopping Guide

Advantages: Good variety
Disadvantages: Spread over large areas

...As far as cities go, Bristol is probably on the smaller end of the scale, but it delivers a relatively comprehensive selection of shops to suit all tastes. I cannot profess to be an expert on all types of shops - as I doubt buy all types of products - but will attempt to offer some useful advice on various aspects of the Bristol shopping experience. Bristol's location makes it very accessible to the shopper. The M32 leaves the M4 and then runs straight into the City Centre - literally. You can see the main shopping centre as you reach the end of the M32, so finding the shops won't cause you any problems. Nonetheless, you would be well advised to take advantage of one of the many Park and Ride schemes in place in the surrounding areas, as parking in Bristol City Centre can be difficult, and expensive. The local Bus Company run a very...

LostWitness 09.01.2001 (06.01.2001) · Read review
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Review of Bristol in General

Pity our City

Advantages: New night buses are good
Disadvantages: Unreliable

...FirstCity Line is the primary bus operator within the City of Bristol and its surrounding area. There is virtually no competition for service in Bristol, despite the de-regulation that took place some years ago, enabling much greater opportunity for companies to compete for, and provide service on bus routes. As a result of this, and other factors, bus services in the area are generally very poor. Service varies in frequency, quality and reliability from one route to another, but in my time in Bristol, I have relied upon various different routes, and have found them to be largely the same: Fares City Line Fares are probably set at an average rate, compared to other cities and services. A single journey of three or four miles typically costs between £1 and £1.30, with considerable savings to be made if you purchase a return...

LostWitness 11.01.2001 (09.01.2001) · Read review
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Review of City Line - Bristol

First Bristol

Advantages: extensive network
Disadvantages: very exspensive, unrelyable around peak hours

...I feel i should start this article by saying that the bus company in bristol is no longer cityline, it is now first as it is in many other parts of the country. i also feel that bristol buses often get an unnessisarily negative review. The bus network in bristol is good, and generaly buses in bristol have a relativly good frequency with the vast majority operating at least every 20mins (most every 10mins) up to 17 buses an hour along the gloucester road "showcase route" and they genraly run from 7am until 11:30pm on weekdays, with services after 9:30 subsidised by the council. Reliablity on bus services is improving due to first extending the length of jounies causeing buses to wait in lay-bys, and due to investiment in "showcase bus routes" which are posh bus lanes, and investment in non-posh bus lanes. however it is still poor...

ricardoz_rox 29.10.2005 · Read review
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Review of City Line - Bristol

Contemporary Arts in Bristol

Advantages: Good variety of events, many of which are free
Disadvantages: Hard to say

...My second visit to Bristol was on a decidedly damp Saturday afternoon, so we were looking for places to spend some time inside. Having walked down the steep slope of Park Street and not being in any hurry to go back up, I suggested that the Arnolfini arts centre might not be too much further to walk. Situated on Bristol's Harbourside, it is easily reached by walking along the quayside from The Centre. From the south you can get there by crossing the swing bridge on Prince Street. Admission is free, so it is definitely worth a visit if you are interested in the arts. The Arnolfini has no permanent collection of artworks, so exhibitions change from time to time. There is currently (August 2008) a display described as an 'interactive shopping experience' entitled 'Far West'. Although not exactly my cup of tea, there was a degree...

denella 20.08.2008 · Read review
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Review of Arnolfini, Bristol

BRISTOLS AHOY

Advantages: Big enough to be good
Disadvantages: Small enough to be friendly

...So people, this will be my last op for a couple of weeks after I move on Sunday and have to wait for a new phone line, etc, I've decided to write an op on my native city. This will be my 10th move and I wouldn't dream of living anywhere else, so heres the low-down on the South West's funkiest city. Bristol is the 7th biggest city in the UK and has around 400,000 people living in it. Due to the two universities in it, they being Bristol University and the University of the West of England (my own beloved uni!), the population can move around about, UWE has 24,000 students alone. That's not to say that Bristol is just a student city, there's definitely much more to it than that. I could concentrate on the bad things, like the rising crime rate, one of the highest council taxes in the country, highest homelessness population outside...

Emma1973 18.05.2002 · Read review
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Review of Bristol (England)

Thistling in Bristol

Advantages: Very nice service
Disadvantages: Very NOT nice prices

..., Bristol, and Birmingham and have typically found the same service up and down the country and the hotels are pretty much identical! The service and rooms up and down the country are all a mirror image of each other. Initially I found this bizarre but now I’m used to the same spiel I get and automatically answer “no” to “Would you like a wake up call?” and “Ok then” to “Would you like a complimentary paper?” This time I stayed a Thistle Hotel in Bristol Temple Meads. I didn’t see much of Bristol but the city centre, which is where the hotel is located, is very pretty and parts of it have a village atmosphere with its little personal shops as opposed to the big bustling commercial streams of department stores. I arrived in the evening and entered what was a pretty grand looking...

Miss-D 31.05.2001 · Read review
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Review of Thistle Bristol Grand Hotel, Bristol