Exploring the city of Bristol

EF Academy Torbays students were lucky enough to be given a chance to visit the famous city of Bristol It is the United Kingdom’s eighth most populous city, and the most populous city in Southern England after London. Bristol is one of the eight largest regional English cities that make up the Core Cities Group, and is ranked as a gamma world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, the fourth highest ranked English city. People from the city are known as Bristolians.

Bristol’s prosperity has been linked with the sea since its earliest days. It was the base for the early voyages of exploration to the New World: on a ship out of Bristol in 1497 John Cabot was the first European since the Vikings to land in North America; and in 1499 William Weston, a Bristol merchant, was the first Englishman to lead an exploration to North America. The Port of Bristol has since moved from Bristol Harbour in the city centre to the Severn Estuary at Avonmouth and Royal Portbury Dock.

Bristol is one of the UK’s most popular tourist destinations. It was selected in 2009 as one of the world’s top-ten cities by international travel publishers Dorling Kindersley in their Eyewitness guides for young adults, was named the best city to live in Britain in 2014 by The Sunday Times, and won the EU’s European Green Capital Award in 2015.

Bristol has a thriving current and historical arts scene. Some of these have merged with modern venues and digital production companies being based in old buildings around the city. In 2008 the city was a finalist for the 2008 European Capital of Culture; however the title was awarded to Liverpool.

Bristol has a great street art culture including music with bands like Portishead and Massive Attack creating a whole new genre of music and of course the infamous street artist Banksy who has reached global acclaim.

Students were able to visit the university, go shopping in the huge new shopping center cabots circus as well as getting to see lots of amazing historical land marks such as SS Great Britain the museum ship and former passenger steamship, which was advanced for her time. She was the longest passenger ship in the world from 1845 to 1854. On top of this some of our outstanding art students managed to spot some famous banksy art work around the city. Students enjoyed Banksy spotting and wondering around the giant science museum.