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Slovakia from 30 May to 1 June 2013
Even though Slovakia has had a rough history, it’s a beautiful country with mountains in the north. We are not going to the Capital, Bratislava but concentrating on the mountains.
On the 30 May, we arrived later than usual at about 7.00pm, crossing the Czech/Slovac border and travelling 25 kms to Trencin, Slovakia. We stopped at the Na Ostrove Camping which was fair. The important criteria are that the showers are warm, clean toilets and there is power. We got going by 9.00am and to our positive surprise, the road that we thought we were going to travel on was actually a new highway. Our street directory showed that there was a new highway under construction but except for 200 m it was complete. Fantastic!
We travelled through Zilina, Martin, Liptovsky Hradok and through to Poprad. Having found the Information Centre closed we decided to have lunch then drive up to the High Tatras Mountains. We had a beautiful sunny day so from between Stary Smokovec and Novy Smokovec we caught a gondola up to 1200 m.a.s.l. It was beautiful with the sun shining on the mountains and the town
below. We certainly felt the crispness of the air though.
After checking in at our next camp site (Rijo Camping at Stara Lesna – 1 ½ star so below standard but that was the only campsite in 30 kms), also at the foot of the Mountains, we looked around for a restaurant to eat at that night as we had little food in the fridge. Because it is not ski season, the numbers of restaurants were few and far between.
We then went back to the camp site and hooked into the WiFi (this was when all you Australians were sleeping unfortunately). The meal we had that night we asked the waitress for a traditional Slovakian meal. I had goats cheese (yes Paul Horner, I know that sounds wonderful to you – not) and dumplings with chives, bacon and yogurt. Tom had goats cheese nocchi. Both were quite new (& an experience) although mine was sitting in butter, and some of you know my thoughts on butter, and Tom’s was a bit too salty. We washed it down with some local red wine.
The next day we drove onto Tatranska Lominca to catch a sky rail up
to the highest mountain, Lomnicky Stit at 2634 m. It was going to be 0 degrees up there so we rugged up in our thermals. Two thirds of the way up we changed chair lifts with the 2
nd chair lift travelling over very steep jagged cliff faces. The sad thing was that we knew we were going into a cloud at the top so our view would be minimal. In fact visibility was probably 150 m through more cloud. It was also lightly snowing/ sleeting. They had built a suspension platform looking out at one of the views.
At the top there was also a bar with walls that displayed beautiful shots of the views up there. What a tease. We decided to sit down for a coffee and baileys as we had a 50 minute wait to catch the lift down. Sheryl, we decided not to have a brandy snaps. That wouldn’t have been rights!!!!!
After our mountain experience, we drove down to Poprad, found a Tesco and did our grocery shopping, fueled up and had lunch in our mobile home in the shopping centre carpark – very convenient. It’s pretty cool having your home with you!
We then drove east along another new highway to Kosice (still in Slavakia) via Presov. We were on our way down to Budapest, Hungary. The new highway was excellent. We drove through showers of rain but then it later cleared up and the sun shone.
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