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Published: July 13th 2013
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Saturday July 6 – Another early morning. We had some breakfast and then made our way to the train station as our trains were leaving two minutes apart. Yvonne was off to raft with some friends and I was leaving for Bratislava, which is only a little over an hour away. As I sat on the train I couldn’t believe that my time there was already over. I stayed five nights and it went so fast. In Bratislava, I was now in a new country for the first time on the trip. Welcome to Slovakia. I walked to my hostel, about 15 minutes away. I couldn’t check in until noon but I did get a bed assigned and a locker for my daypack and left my big backpack behind. I quickly looked to see if there was a free walking tour of the city, and there was one leaving at 11am. It was 10:41. So I hurried down to the designated area, and per my style, it took me a minute to locate it, but the group was still there. I could hear two girls talking in English and decided they would be my friends for the day. I just had
to make my move. The tour started and our tour guide was local and super cute. I just wanted to hug her. She was good and funny. Between stops I got in with the girls. They are both in college, from Australia, studying for a year in Europe, but they just met in the hostel the night before. Nice girls. On the tour the guide pointed something out for a picture and I took the picture, and then when I looked around, the group was gone. I looked and looked but did not see them. How do you lose 20 people? I finally did find them, after going where I thought they might be, not seeing them, coming back, asking a woman on the street and then going back to where I thought originally. And they were there. Amazing. So I was more careful this time. The tour took a little more than two hours, and from there the girls and I walked over to the castle to look around. We walked the whole outside and got good views of Bratislava. Then I was starving, so I went for some lunch with Helen and we agreed to meet Georgia later
Weird statue
This picture caused me to lose my tour group for another walk. Helen wanted to find one of two places the guide had mentioned to eat at, but no luck. And I was zero help. I can barely find my way with a map. I had no idea where we had been when she pointed out those spots. So we finally ate at another place and we both had potato dumplings with goat cheese and bacon. Helen and I then went to to church to look inside, but there was a wedding going on, so no luck. There were many weddings all day actually. We met back up with Georgia at 5pm and then headed uphill on a trolley bus for the Slovak monument, which had good views of the city. Bratislava is quite small with a nice old town. I was disappointed to learn that 2/3 of the old town, as well as the Jewish quarter, were demolished to build a new bridge that takes the highway through town and across the river. It’s called the UFO bridge because it has what looks like a UFO sitting on top of it. Very weird. Across the river is a concrete jungle of ugly buildings left over from the Communist
days. Very trendy to be from there now our tour guide tells us. At this point, I went back to the hostel to check in. I made a reservation for July 11, when I plan to come back through Bratislava on my way to Hungary as was told I could have a single room for the same price as this dorm next time. Oh, I hope so. Then I met the girls downstairs and we went to a café in the old town for some food. I shared a panini with Helen and had a milkshake followed by my third ice cream this week. So good. It’s almost impossible not to eat ice cream in Europe in the summer. Everyone walking past you has one and just looks so happy. We shut the place down at 9pm and then I headed back to shower the sweaty day off and get organized for tomorrow.
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