Hello pals, happy Sunday morning. Or, at least it is for me as I record this.
This is my look. This is a good look. Today I have something a little bit different.
Today I am working with Great Western Railway, which is a train service here in the UK, in
the South West UK. And we are kind of teaming up to celebrate
World Book Day. I'm editing this on another day and realising
that I said National Book Day. Good job, Kayley.
I think one of my favourite things about the UK and favourite things about living in the
UK is the accessibility offered by trains. When I was young, there was a train that would
go through my hometown that I never really got to ride on but we used to count the train
cars. They were just this thing I saw but could
never go near. And on the flip side of that you had the fantastical
trains - you had the Hogwarts Express, and you had the train that got the Pevensie's
out of the Blitz and to the Professor's house where they found Narnia.
So trains were almost mythic in my mind. When I moved to the UK a few years back, I
used to go up and down to Edinburgh every few weeks and that's when I just really
fell in love with trains. Okay, before I keep talking about trains,
let me finish curling my hair and let's get on a bus.
That'll do.
Not only is it a more sustainable way of travel as compared to planes or cars or anything
like that. I love taking a few hours to just sit and
relax and look out the window and read a book and feel like you're actually going somewhere.
Because you literally are. Since moving back to the UK about a year ago,
I've made it my mission to see as much of the UK as possible because it's so easy
to just book a ticket online, usually a few weeks in advance, I think on Great Western
Railways you can book up to twelve weeks in advance and it's really cheap, and then
you can just go see a new city but then come home at the end of the day and sleep in your
own bed. It's a form of—door opening, please enter.
It's a form of travel that's basically only second best to apparition, it my opinion.
Love an early morning empty bus. Everything the light touches is my kingdom.
Announcement: Alight here for Portobello Road market.
The reason I'm on a train right now is because I'm on my way to Bristol for the very first
time. So Great Western Railways is hiding tickets
just like this one in bookshops and train stations all over the country and they are
a free return ticket to escape, so not only can you escape within a book, but you can
escape on a train to visit a new city like I'm doing right now.
It's a treasure hunt that involved books and trains. So, I don't know, what more
could you want? I am currently on my way to Bristol to hide
one of these babies in my favourite escapist fiction books.
Put your guesses in the comments now and you'll see later what book I hide it in.
In case you're wondering what my train read is today, I am reading Between the World and
Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It's also Black History Month in the US,
so finally getting around to reading this one.
So I've arrived in Bristol! It's actually giving me a lot of Sweden, Stockholm vibes
right now. I hope you can hear me and it's not too
windy here on the water. So to be perfectly honest, for a long time
I mostly associated Bristol with this: Hagrid: flying over Bristol
So, it was just kind of where Harry fell asleep. And I also am pretty sure that Bristol is
where JK Rowling was originally from or nearby Bristol or something like that and also where
she got the name "Potter." Harry Potter knowledge don't fail me now,
please! Though is recent years I have learned that
Bristol is a really creative environment and it's home to a lot of creative industries,
which is really awesome! And also it's beautiful and it's on water,
which makes me feel like I'm at home because my hometown was a little ferry town.
So the first thing I've done today is check out the Arnolfini, which is like a museum
and there's also an independent bookshop at the front, which is the reason I wanted
to go in. I love seeing as many bookshops as humanly
possible. I've bookmarked a lot of places that I really
want to visit while I'm here in Bristol. Let's do that.
Does this give you guys as many Diagon Alley vibes as it's giving me? Also it's called
the Christmas Steps so it's my kind of place. In true European fashion, a lot of smaller
shops and indie shops are actually shut because it's a Sunday and today was the only day
I could come out, but nevertheless. She persisted. I'm off to find some more indie shops. I
went into a really cool shop called Blaze that sold a lot of cool art, like local crafts
and stuff. Very cool.
I picked up a gift for my brother that I can't show you because he might watch this and his
birthday is in April. So I popped into The Last Bookshop which you
can't really see because it's all covered in scafolding.
But it was really cool, it was all secondhand books.
They also sold old covers of magazines and such and I got this old cover of Vogue for
five pounds and I think it is so cool! So it's been a little while since I checked
in, mostly just because I've been popping in and out of different shops as I go and
now I'm on my way over to a stationary shop I want to go to and the Clifton Suspension
Bridge which everyone has told me I need to do so that's where we're going!
I got a bus pass for the day but I've just been walking everywhere because it's more
fun. Hello from what is probably a very windy Clifton
Suspension Bridge! But hey! That's pretty cool. Right? Right?
So I just wandered around the Clifton Arcades, which is a bunch of small, independent shops
and they were really, really cool. If you're in Bristol, I super recommend
going there. They had a really cool stationary shop called
Papersmiths that I had been waiting to go to.
I got really overwhelmed by the amount of cool stationary and ended up…not getting
anything. But I was very tempted by a lot of stuff there.
As you guys have seen, I've taken you to a few different bookshops.
The Last Bookstore, we went to Standfords, which was the travel bookshop, as well as
the art museum bookshop that I went to as soon as I got to Bristol.
So we've been to a few independent bookshops and I still have my ticket here.
So what I'm going to do is go back to one of those three bookshops, place this in one
of my favourite escapist books, maybe I'll give you a hint later as to what it is, but
I think you guys might be able to guess! And anyone who watches this from Bristol can
find it and get your own little escape. Okay, so I just had a lovely cream tea at
The Tea Bird, which is a little tea room here in Bristol.
I hid the ticket earlier. I also popped into the museum for a bit, but I didn't want
to film there because museums are weird about that, obviously, rightfully so.
I'm headed back to the station now. Bristol is weird because it feels like three
different cities at once. They have some old areas and then some newer
areas and they're all loosely connected, I don't know!
It mixes the old and new in a very different way than, say, Edinburgh where there's a
very stark contrast. Here it fades in and out of old and new.
I don't know how to explain it, but it's really interesting.
Okay I've thought a little more about it. I think what I'm saying about the flowing
in and out is that you can feel every decade here.
Like you can feel all of the centuries and decades that this city has been around.
Oh my god, do you hear this right now? (man yelling from car)
Oh no, oh no. And just like that, it is the end of my day
here at Bristol. I'm sorry to anyone who came here looking
for a step by step what you should do while you're in Bristol video or something.
When I go to a city just for a day, I kind of just like to live that city, just kind
of go in and out of stuff, hang out, wander, and that's what I did and I had a really
wonderful day! I hid my ticket. I'll give you a little
sneak peak, well actually it's ind of a bid sneak peak because now you'll know what
book it is right here. It's in an indie bookstore here in Bristol.
So one of you can go out and find it if you live in Bristol.
I'm excited to just relax on the train and start editing this video actually, probably.
Thank you to Great Western Railways for partnering with me on this video, hope you guys enjoyed
it. And I hope you all go find some magical tickets
to get you out of the city for a day. Because I had a really lovely day. It was
great. Let me know in the comments if you've ever
been to Bristol or if I have encouraged you to check it out.
If you want anymore information about the hashtag Immerse Yourself deal that they've
got going on, check out the link down below. Use Great Western Rail to book your trains
because they're awesome and they give really good discounts.
Hope you guys have a great week. This could video is like an audio nightmare
for myself. Oh well.
I'll see you next time.
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