Bratislava
Cliffs Notes Version:We got into town late afternoon, walked around Old Town, walked around the castle and watched teenagers make out, and then had a nice dinner with traditional Slovakian food and Slovakian wine.
| BratislavaCliffs Notes Version:We got into town late afternoon, walked around Old Town, walked around the castle and watched teenagers make out, and then had a nice dinner with traditional Slovakian food and Slovakian wine. |
Day 1The train from Krakow to Bratislava had an hour or so layover in Vienna. Since we were only spending the night in Bratislava, and Vienna was our next stop anyway, we stowed our bags in a locker and just threw a change of clothes in our daypack. From this point on in our trip, we would only have one day in each city so the usage of train station lockers and saving ourselves trips to the hostel to drop off our bags only to have to come back later to check-in became a recurring theme.We arrived in Bratislava late afternoon. Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and was one of the smaller cities that we were going to. Like most of the cities, it had an old town with the cobblestone streets with many areas pedestrian only. It also had a castle as one of the main tourist destinations. The nice thing about Bratislava for us was it was the first city that we had zero highlighted must see tourist stops so we were just able to enjoy walking around the city and seeing what we just happened to come across. We started out walking around Old Town, where some of the more interesting elements were the random statues that were around. Also, a quick tidbit about Bratislava. All of the main squares in Old Town offer free wifi. Anyway, we took some pictures with some of the statues and then headed up a very long and steep hill towards the castle.
The castle's interior is under construction, but the castle walls were still open. We walked around a bit and checked out some of the views of the city. We soon discovered that Bratislava is the teenage makeout capital of the world. All along the castle walls, especially the portions overlooking the river were kids just going out it. I thought about it and I couldn't really blame them. If I had a thousand year old castle with city views overlooking a river to work with, I might have got more action in high school. Unfortunately, sitting on top of a grain bin overlooking the Dredge (name for the small creek running through my home town) didn't really have the same pull with the high school ladies where I was from.
After Colleen's repeated queries on why we don't make out on castle walls like we used to (Burlington had a crap ton of castles), we went to dinner. The place was really nice and we discovered that Slovakia makes some pretty good wine. This was verified when I talked to one of my Slovakian friends back home. Unfortunately, he also broke the news that they don't really export too much so that might be all the Slovakian wine we're going to have for a while. The next morning we woke up and headed back to Vienna. | ||||||
