facttime

There's something about Bristol. Although the long weekend I spent there recently was only the third time I've been in two decades, both of my previous visits made me fall for the place enough to seriously consider going to university there and moving there , respectively. With a population of around 470,000, Bristol feels like a proper city, with great food and culture, but parts of it still retain a relaxed, villagey feel and it has a fantastic alternative scene too. I've always blamed expensive rail fares and hotel rates for not travelling very much within the UK but with Bristol only being a 1h30 train ride from London, I really have no excuse for visiting so infrequently. Here's what I got up to on my recent city break. THINGS TO DO Exploring Bristol's history . The city centre is compact and easily explored on foot or by bike (watch out for the hills, though). I usually like to take a walking tour when I'm in a city I don't know that well, but as it wa...

I've known for some time that I was long overdue a return visit to Bristol, a city that I've loved each time I've been and yet, like many places in the UK, I don't get to often enough. In particular, the city's speciality coffee scene has changed a huge amount since I was last there (whisper it) a decade ago. A three-day trip over the Easter weekend wasn't enough time — when is it? — but the sunny weather was perfect for coffee-shop-hopping and I managed to visit 12 coffee spots. In the accompanying Google Map, my very favourite spots are marked in purple, and I've also included three more that I didn't visit this time but whose sister coffee shops (in Bristol or elsewhere) I've been to. Most cafés featured coffee from roasters based in Bristol and the south-west, and I was also blown away by the range and quality of baked goods and sweet treats on offer, from coconut curry pasties, to cinnamon pretzels and all kinds of doughnut. Go on an empty stoma...

Since I got back from Uganda , work and life have both been keeping me busy, with few opportunities for coffee-shop-hopping. But on Sunday, with the sun shining, a brunch reservation on my phone and a spring in my step, I headed over to Notting Hill. I brunched at Sunday in Brooklyn — my first visit to the London outpost of the Brooklyn original, which I went to on my penultimate visit to New York . After a spot of hanami — the cherry blossoms were particularly lovely alongside the colourful houses of Notting Hill — it was coffee time. Luckily, I had just the coffee shop in mind, thanks to another great recommendation from Laith from  Saint Nine . And as it turned out,  LIFT , on Kensington Church Street, had another Brooklyn connection in store for me. LIFT opened in late 2019 — ah, the beforetimes! — and it was great to see such a constant stream of customers stopping by on a sleepy Sunday afternoon, passing by the A-board that declares that "coffee is a fruit." The brigh...