Things to do in Bristol
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Riverstation
The city's original, award-winning riverside restaurant, still renowned for its super-sophisticated modern British cooking. The downstairs cafe rustles up light lunches, coffee and feather-light pastries, while up on the 1st floor it's all effortless elegance and European cuisine.
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Budokan
Pan-Asian food is cooked up at this exciting fusion restaurant, where diners sit at communal tables and indulge in handmade sushi, ho-fun noodles and Malaysian curries. Particularly good is the 'Rapid Refuel' menu available pre-19:00: sushi, side-dish and main, all for a paltry sum.
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Primrose Café
The classic Clifton cafe, as popular for coffee with the Sunday papers as for an evening meal with chums. Pavement tables are dotted around Parisian-style, while the dining room is a cosy grotto of fairy-lights, white linen and church candles. British food with a French accent. A 2-/3-course menu (£15.95/18.95) is available.
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Papadeli
Everything from goat's-cheese tart and Serrano ham to damson jam and poppy-seed cake is stocked at this gorgeous deli, where the shelves are filled with more cheeses and charcuterie than a Provençal street market.
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Rocotillo's
American-style diner serving gourmet burgers, crispy fries and the best milkshakes in town.
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Pipe & Slippers
The Pipe is a solid bet for a solid pint and an equally solid meal - Bath Ales behind the bar and Pieminister pies make this ever popular with Bristol's boozer-cruisers.
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SS Great Britain
In 1843 Brunel designed the mighty SS Great Britain, the first transatlantic steamship to be driven by a screw propeller. For 43 years the ship served as a luxury ocean-going liner and cargo vessel, but huge running costs and mounting debts meant she was eventually sold off to serve as a troopship and coal hulk, a sorry fate for such an important vessel. By 1937 she was no longer watertight and was abandoned near Port Stanley in the Falklands, before finally being towed back to Bristol in 1970.
Since then a massive 30-year restoration program has brought SS Great Britain back to stunning life. The ship's rooms have been refurbished in impeccable detail, including the galle…
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British Empire & Commonwealth Museum
Bristol's slave-trading past is thoughtfully explored at the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum. Dealing with the history and consequences of British colonial conquest, the 16 galleries range over 500 years of British trade, exploration and exploitation, and while there's a conscious attempt at perspective, it's hard not to be moved by the stories of subjugation that underpinned Britain's imperial rise.
Highlights include sepia-toned films from the Empire's heyday and a collection of outfits worn by colonial administrators, Indian viceroys and tribal chiefs. Breaking the Chains, marking the bicentenary of the Abolition of Slavery Act in 1807, interweaves film, music and…
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Clifton Suspension Bridge
Clifton's most famous (and photographed) landmark is another Brunel masterpiece, the 76m-high Clifton Suspension Bridge, which spans the Avon Gorge from Clifton over to Leigh Woods in northern Somerset. Construction began in 1836, but sadly Brunel died before the bridge's completion in 1864. It was mainly designed to carry light horse-drawn traffic and foot passengers, but these days around 12,000 cars cross it every day – testament to the quality of the construction and the vision of Brunel's design.
It's free to walk or cycle across the bridge; car drivers pay a 50p toll. There's a visitor information point near the tower on the Leigh Woods side. Free guided tours of t…
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Blaise Castle House Museum
In the northern suburb of Henbury is this late-18th-century house and social-history museum. Displays include vintage toys, costumes and other Victorian ephemera. Bus 43 (45 minutes, every 15 minutes) passes the castle from Colston Ave; bus 1 (20 minutes, every 10 minutes) from St Augustine's Pde doesn't stop quite as close, but is quicker and more frequent.
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Georgian House
This 18th-century house provides an atmospheric illustration of aristocratic life in Bristol during the Georgian era – and the city's links to the slave trade. The six-storeyed house was home to West India merchant John Pinney, along with his slave Pero (after whom Pero's Bridge across the harbour is named). It's decorated throughout in period style, typified by the huge kitchen (complete with cast-iron roasting spit) and the grand drawing rooms.
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St Mary Redcliffe
Described as 'the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England' by Queen Elizabeth I, St Mary Redcliffe is a stunning piece of perpendicular architecture with a soaring 89m-high spire, a grand hexagonal porch that easily outdoes Bristol cathedral in splendour, and a vaulted ceiling decorated with fine gilt bosses. The 14th-century south porch is carved with intricate birds and animals.
At the entrance to the America Chapel there is a whale rib presented to the church by John Cabot as a souvenir of his pioneering trip to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in 1497.
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Bordeaux Quay
Top-class dining with sustainable credentials, in a fabulous converted dock warehouse overlooking the harbour. It has multiple guises: a restaurant, brasserie, bar, deli, bakery and even a cookery school if you feel like brushing up your kitchen skills. The same industrial-chic decor and continental-style food runs throughout, but it's a hot ticket: reservations recommended.
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Bristol Cathedral
Originally founded as the church of an Augustinian monastery in 1140, Bristol Cathedral was remodelled during the 19th century. It's one of Britain's best examples of a 'Hall Church' (meaning the nave, chapels and choir are the same height). Although the nave and the west towers are largely 19th century, the medieval choir has some fascinating misericords depicting apes in hell, quarrelling couples and dancing bears, and the south transept shelters a rare Saxon carving of the Harrowing of Hell, discovered under the chapter-house floor after a 19th-century fire.
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Red Lodge
Built in 1590 but much remodelled in 1730, this red-brick house reflects the architecture of both periods. The highlight is the Elizabethan Oak Room, which still features its original oak panelling, plasterwork ceiling and carved chimneypiece.
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City Museum & Art Gallery
Housed in a stunning Edwardian building near the university. There's a collection of British and French art on the 1st floor, along with galleries dedicated to ceramics and decorative arts. Look out for the 'Bristol Boxkite' above reception, a pioneering canvas aeroplane built in Bristol and made famous in the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. On the ground floor is the archaeological, geological and natural history wings, as well as the refurbished Egyptian Gallery.
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Explore-At-Bristol
On Bristol's revived harbourside is one of the country's leading science centres, Explore-At-Bristol. It's crammed with hundreds of hands-on exhibits demonstrating the everyday applications of science, with zones spanning ingenious inventions, optical illusions, outer-space technology and the human brain. Strum on a virtual harp, freeze your shadow, become a virtual sperm or journey across the solar system in the amazing domed Planetarium.
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Bristol Zoo
The city's award-winning zoo occupies a huge site on the north side of Clifton. Highlights include gorilla and gibbon islands, a reptile and bug house, a butterfly forest, a lion enclosure, a monkey jungle and the new Zooropia , a treetop adventure park strung with net ramps, rope bridges, hanging logs and a zip-line.
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Cabot Tower
Built in 1897 to commemorate four hundred years since Cabot's voyage to Newfoundland, the 150m-high Cabot Tower stands in the small park on Brandon Hill and can be seen from across the city. Built in red sandstone and pale-cream Bath stone, the tower offers wonderful views from the top of its spiral staircase, but be warned - it's a long, puff-powered climb to the top.
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Pieminister
Forget boring old steak-and-kidney – the creations at Bristol's beloved pie shop range from Thai Chook (chicken with green curry sauce) to Chicken of Aragon (chicken, bacon, garlic and vermouth) and Mr Porky (pork, bacon, leeks and Somerset cider). Veggies are well cared for, too: you can even ask for meat-free mash and gravy. The main shop's on Stokes Croft, but there's another outlet in St Nick's market.
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St Nicholas Market
Shopophiles will find plenty to feed their habit in Bristol, whether it's a designer hand-me-down in a retro clothes shop or a choice cheese in a local food market. Top stop is the St Nicholas Market , a chaotic melee of wobbly stalls and indie shops selling everything from recycled clothes to handmade jewellery and artisan bread.
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City Sightseeing
An open-top hop-on, hop-off bus chugs past all the major attractions, including the SS Great Britain, Bristol Zoo, Clifton and Temple Meads. Buses leave Broad Quay every 45 minutes June to September, and every 90 minutes October to May. If you can survive the stigma, it's actually a useful way of buzzing round the city.
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Picture House
This converted cinema is another sign of how far British cooking has come. The dining room is light and sexy, with picture windows, chocolate-coloured seats and blonde-wood floors, and the menu mixes Albion classics (slow-cooked mutton, pig-in-a-blanket, Eton Mess) with esoteric fare (smoked eel, wild boar, squirrel).
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Fishers Seafood Restaurant
Stripey tablecloths and storm lanterns conjure a shipshape atmosphere at this Clifton seafooderie, which takes daily deliveries from Billingsgate Fish Market. The food is simple and superb, ranging from bream fillets to full-blown bouillabaisse - here the ingredients are the star, not the chef.
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Reenie & Ron
Reenie & Ron bring their unique and decadent Parisian-style shoe emporium to the streets of Bristol. And this palace of pleasures doesn't only sell shoes, it also has exquisite tea sets made of fine China, and crystal champagne flutes. This is definitely the store for that special-occasion purchase.
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