Features / Travel
‘Cheeky surprises keep popping up’
It’s a dream journalistic assignment. New York Times columnist Jada Yuan is spending this year visiting every one of the destinations in her newspaper’s 52 places to go in 2018 list.
And pride of place at number 51 in that list? Bristol of course, the city of Massive Atack, Wallace & Gromit and Banksy, “where cheeky surprises keep popping up”.
On a flying visit to the city where she travelled around by Uber and YoBike (“I loved the mobility and my wrong turns, which took me to the colorful houses in the Totterdown neighborhood and the Victorian gardens of Arnos Vale Cemetery”), Yuan met Bristol24/7 Fashion Editor Emma Gorton-Ellicott at her day job at Desk Lodge on Temple Way, who led her that night to a charity fashion show at the Old Market Assembly.
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New York Times reporter Jada Yuan attended the Fashion Front show at the Old Market Assembly
Yuan also ate a falafel from Eat a Pitta in St Nick’s Market and fish and chops from Bishopston Fish Bar on Gloucester Road; went on a walking tour with Duncan McKellar, the artist whose yellow scaffolding pole cover sculptures have become familiar city landmarks; and had a drink at The Canteen on Stokes Croft.
“My favorite night, though, was my simplest,” Yuan writes. “I was taking pictures outside BrewDog, a beer pub alongside the city’s Floating Harbor, and three guys invited me to join them.
“They were ‘away lads’ from Somerset who spend their weekdays in Bristol working for a company that installs green rooftops on new buildings. (Bristol was named a European Green Capital a few years back.)
“Over many fun, boozy hours, we met a terrific magician from Spain, known as Magic Malka, and a waitress at Three Brothers Burgers, Antonia May Cross, who also runs sex-education talks.
“Along the way, she figured out that she knew my away lads: ‘Oh, so you’re the ones in the construction site waking me up every morning!'”
Yuan has now spent two months on the road. Her stop after Bristol and the only other UK appearance on the New York Times’ list was Glasgow, with her next dispatches coming from Tallinn in Estonia, and Vilnius in Lithuania.
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