Day trip to Bratislava

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Monday

Today we met at half 8 to catch the train to Bratislava, Slovakia. We caught the tram to the station and then got on the train. The journey took about an hour and was fairly scenic. When we got there George showed us where to go in the old town before he had to head back to Vienna. We headed up to the castle first. It was under rennovation but we walked around the outside and it gave us great views of Bratislava - a surprisingly cosmopolitan city. Apparently you could also see Vienna and Budapest from there. Tony found north on his compass but we still couldn't quite work out which was which! Then we took a walk down the hill back to the old town. A few people went for lunch and the rest of us took a stroll. Most of the museums were closed as it was a Monday but we stopped at a cute little chocolate shop and bought a few samples. I had some chocolate covered cherries - they were georgeous! Then we went to the square and went on the hunt for some of the statues of different people like Napolean. We found another lovely square with fountains and walked down there before stopping for lunch. We had the traditional Slovakian dish of bryndzore halusky which is dumplings with sheep's cheese and bacon. I liked it a lot but it was very filling. We then headed back to catch the train back.

Jill, Andrea and I decided to try and climb the tower of Stephansdom but after getting off and the wrong tram stop and walking all the way there we found it was closed! 😞 Jill managed to go up the North Tower though but in the five minutes it took me and Andrea to get to the other tower it had closed! It was very annoying!! Luckily when we got back to the hotel we found out we were leaving Vienna at 11am rather than 9am the next day so a few of us are going to get up early and climb it in the morning.

We went for dinner at a local Austrian restaurant near our hotel. We had a frankfurter sausage with horseradish and mustard - apparently traditional Austrian way. It was very nice. I even tried someone's Wiener Snitzel which was actually better than I expected. We had a few drinks and then headed to another local bar for more beer and conversation. Was a good night.

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