Tatra Mountains - Tatranska Lomnica Day 14-15 (May 31-June 1) We had the morning to fill in, in Krakow and thought a visit to the local Shopping complex would be a good start. However, it turned out to be a public holiday for Pentecost, so waiting for the shops to open turned out to be fruitless. We filled in our time by catching up on our internet mail, as the weather wasn’t looking great. We then caught a bus to the border with Slovakia, where we then had a mini-bus that took us across the border to a stop where we [View Full Entry]

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Took a trip to explore Bratislava (an hour away from Vienna) via public bus and within 2 hours of arriving I was looking for the bus back to Vienna. Twas nice and quaint but small, and thats all I have to say! :) [View Full Entry]

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Bratislava — historically Pozsony and Pressburg (see also other names) — is the capital of the Slovak Republic and, with a population of about 429,000, also the country's largest city. Bratislava is in southwestern Slovakia on both banks of the Danube River. Bordering Austria and Hungary, it is the only national capital that borders two countries. It and Vienna are also two of Europe's closest national capitals, at less than 60 kilometres (37 mi) apart. [View Full Entry]

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10 February Flying out this afternoon but not until about 6pm so had plenty of time to spare before then. Had a bit of a leisurely morning given I saw much of the old town yesterday. Checked out of the hostel at around 9am and left my luggage in the hostel. Basically spent a couple of day seeing the last of the sights I didn;t get a chance to see yesterday. Got incredibly lost and ended up on the other side of town from where I was supposed to be but that does tend to happen to me. After a few [View Full Entry]

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I decide to head back to the Ginger Monkey in the High Tatras - to help Ritchie who had to go to Switzerland for his girlfriends Father's funeral. He had asked if I could when I was there the previous week - and well Wally need some one to watch him for a few days. So I heade back there with Greg who I meet in the hostel the night before and we headed off at about 8 in the morning to get the first train. It took us a good few hours to get there and didnt arrive until about [View Full Entry]

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Bratislava was quick and dirty. The lonely planet claimed trains left every two hours - this is correct except for the 4 hour break they have between 10am and 2pm, so having missed the early trains, I killed some time on the net before nearly missing the next train. So rocked up at the train station with about 40 mins to spare. killed 15 mins waiting at the wrong ticket booth. I was direct to the international and eventually found it 5 mins later. There was a free counter so went up to it asked about the next train. She yes [View Full Entry]

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After the pace and drinking of Krakow, I was due to a break from my holiday. This is where the hostel the Ginger Monkey fits into things. The problem with getting from Krakow to anywhere is that the Tatras Mts are in the way and so you must train or bus around them. The ginger monkey however is perfectly located as a stop over point between Krakow and Bratislava or Budapest or Prague. It cuts down the travel time between this destinations in half. After a 2 hr bus ride from Krakow to Zakopane and the waited an 1 hr for [View Full Entry]

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Well here goes anoararther hit or miss entry. I will have fun finding all these when I get home if they havent gone through. We are in Bratislava an old Austro Hungarian town that became the capital in C14th then lost it then regained it etc for about the next 400 years. It is a quaint town right on the Danube and has some car manufacturers and a bit of crystal making but apparently the whole country is expecting dire consequences when the crunch really come. It is sad to see because they have gone through so much and put alot [View Full Entry]

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Slovakians don't speak Spanish....Now this won't really surprise many of you, and yet the number of times we started conversations with an Hola or threw a por favor on the end of a sentence surprised even us. After so many months of speaking Spanish it is still our first resort when faced with uncomprehending locals. Thankfully English tended to be widely spoken and we stuck to that after mumbling a few words in Slovak that we weren't really sure how to pronounce. We flew from London Stansted directly to Bratislava airport and had organised to be picked up by the owner [View Full Entry]

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www.justgiving.com/3marathonchallenge It's often said that 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day'. Perhaps that explains why we were a tad hungry and disgruntled on arrival in Bratislava. Our hostel in Vienna had served up what appeared to be some form of prison food. As we scooped up our trays and sat down we spent the next 10 minutes working out what the gooey substance on our plates was. It was either very runny scrambled eggs or yellow porridge! The sun was out in Bratislava and that helped to cheer us up somewhat as we wandered to our hotel. There [View Full Entry]

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