Number 38, Bristol, United Kingdom (2023)

I'm sure number 38 is controlled by ghosts. We certainly hardly saw a living soul there. From the moment we arrived, through a blizzard to find the place closed, barred and guarded by a lone guy smoking a cigarette, until our time was up, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Sure, someone went out through a dark door on the ground floor to give us a key, and someone else came in two days later to fix the mini-fridge, but overall it was a house of whispers, faint creaks, and general silence. This atmosphere of isolation in the center of a large city is partly due to the time of year (mid-January) and partly to the deliberate design of the hotel, which avoids a formal reception, bars and other noisy commons in favor of peace and privacy and a quiet hybrid living room/breakfast room, where the volume of conversation fades to murmurs. It was like The Shining without the terrible twins or personality disorders.

It was fine with Mrs. Smith and me. As we explored the West Loft Suite, collapsing on the wide sleigh bed and sitting in the scalded copper tub for two, we cracked open the bottle of crisp red anonymity room service. Our rooms covered the top half of the house and boasted large sash windows with shutters that rose to reveal the snow-covered lawns of the Downs on one side and the colorful houses of Clifton on the other. In addition, deep blue paneling housed a toilet and separate shower with the requisite dining head, stocked with Ren toiletries. The bedside tables were trunks, and a huge vintage trunk sat at the foot of the bed. A Union Jack digital radio was tuned to Jazz FM by a ghost before our arrival.

We were here with many goals: to combine this monotonous month in two, escape the boring post-Christmas dryathalons that surround us on social media, and revisit the city I grew up in over ten years ago. I promised to take it easy on the longing. It was easier said than done. As with any city you spend your formative years in, the streets were filled with memories and filled with my own personal ghosts from the depths of my memory. Even a short walk to his alma mater, an imposing 16th-century pile that "looks like Hogwarts," according to Mrs. Smith, brought back visions of sneaky first cigarettes, messy encounters in the bush, brushes with the law and everything in between. in front of an impressionable teenager.

Number Thirty Eight is ideally placed for exploring the best of Bristol in the morning. A leisurely twenty minute walk took us past Bristol Zoo (impressive but shrouded in exhausting depth in my youth) to Brunel's impressive Clifton Suspension Bridge, built a century and a half ago and a very popular place to say goodbye. permanently to the world. A quick detour took us from sudden death to Clifton Village, home to the city's most exclusive residences and best shops, to coffee and all manner of decadent delights at the Mall Deli.

As the local history in our room pointed out with a typically local mixture of respect and cynicism, Bristol is the victim of thousands of years of, shall we say, creative town planning, bombing and bureaucratic chaos, and as a result has evolved into a hilly and inadequate part of Britain in a charming jumble of alleys, cul-de-sacs and mismatched architectural clashes. While nearby Bath is a compact, convenient, tourist postcard of a city, Bristol is a lively, vibrant mess of a place, and all the more charming for it.

The drive down Blackboy Hill to Whiteladies Road (named after a pub, apparently not a long-forgotten slave trade or racial discrimination) and Park Street is a must. Britain's flat arterial roads are nowhere to be seen here, although HMV and Woolworths never bothered in the first place. Instead, family businesses are thriving after decades, and new competitors - from the hugely popular Cowshed Steakhouse and Butcher to the looming River Cottage - are constantly upgrading Bristol's status as a city worth paying attention to. Park Street, meanwhile, is the place to be for vintage yarn and quirky accessories and, of course, Banksy's famous Naked Man stencil.

That evening, after two obscenely large steaks and two glasses of local Bounders cider at the nearby Townhouse restaurant, we retired to our room at the top of the hilltop house. Mrs. Smith thought we might hear some of the infamous local, ahem 'dogs' on the Downs, but the middle-aged growls were blissfully absent from the bushes and our sleigh bed lulled us into a blissful sleep.

The next morning, waking up to the sun looking out over the city's incredible skyline, enjoying home-baked bread and butter for cakes and a spectacular English spirit on our table, it dawned on me that Bristol has grown as much as I have done earlier. 10 years. For two wet January days, the city was bustling with life as locals, shoppers, tourists, musicians, artists, rowers and sailors streamed through its streets and river. Change has certainly changed - the glitzy Cabot Circus mall has replaced the dingy Galleries mall where we used to hang out at school and try (unsuccessfully) to woo the local girls - but it hasn't broken the city's soul. It's a place you can be proud of, and Number Thirty Eight is the perfect address to explore.