Advertisement
Published: July 11th 2017
Edit Blog Post
It was another checkout day today (they seem to come round so quick) so after brekkie we packed up, paid our debts and said goodbye to Steph and our Korean roomies (first and last words as they kept to themselves). Today we are leaving Vienna heading across to Bratislava for the day and then finally on to Budapest.
With only a little bit of stress, (the journey took longer than expected) we tubed across to Wien HBF and caught the 1h train to Bratislava. Once we had struggled to dump our bags in the automated storage lockers at Bratislava station, due to the machines only taking coins and requiring a specific coinage, next up was struggling to get a city map, transport map, ticket for the correct zones and duration and most importantly, correct bus. This was made a little more difficult by the Slovak people not being quite as good with English as we had come accustomed to in Vienna and, as we were there for a total of 6h, we hadn't learnt much useful Slovak. We managed however, and got ourselves within walking distance of the old town.
We wandered around the pedestrianised streets of old town
Bratislava and soon came across the main square. Despite the sky threatening rain at any moment, it was still pretty hot so we were relieved there was a mist sprayer here and we snapped a few pictures of the fountain and buildings. Then the dark skies opened up for a short spell and we took cover in a doorway before heading round the corner to Michaels Gate, a 51 meter tower with an arch below it. The only remaining fortifications from the 14th century.
There are a number of brass looking statues of various figures dotted around the streets, so we photographed a few, including our selfie with the little man climbing out of the sewer (see below) as we walked through the streets, including some of the coronation procession route. We then came across a little park area with the Slovakian National Theatre at one end and a few market stalls lining its sides. I grabbed a nice coffee from 'Coffee Brothers' bicycle cart and Dan got an ice cream.
We wandered down to the river where we stood next to 'Slovak Radio' and 'Esterhazy Palace' and where we could see the 'UFO', an observation tower which
makes up one side of a large Bridge crossing the Danube, in the distance. Our stomachs informed us that it was lunch time so after some walking around and failed TripAdvisor searches (which were becoming a bit too common now, I've certainly got some feedback for the devs of the TripAdvisor site/app) we settled on the 'Traditional Slovakian Pub' which I am sure was far from 'traditional' but served the right sort of food we were after and in good portions. I went for a 'Montenegro Steak' pork steak coated in mash potato then fried, with chunky wedges (AKA carb overload). It was very nice but at this point, I'm a little over fried foods and schnitzel. Whilst we were eating he heavens really opened, so we took our time finishing up and thankfully it stopped before we moved on to Bratislava Castle.
The castle was a fair schlep up a large hill but it was worth it once we reached the top. The castle houses the museum of history and is a 'symbol of Bratislava'. I really liked the style of the buildings and the surrounding gardens, I thought to myself that if ever I had a beautiful
house in a similar style I would consider a similar design for the garden. It also offered a good vantage point of the city so we snapped up a few panoramas and selfies.
Once we were finished at the castle, we headed back down the hill, across town and back to the bus stop with a quick stop of in Billa to stock up on snacks for dinner on the train. We made it back to the train station in plenty of time, sadly to find our train delayed, initially by 30 mins, then 50, then 80! Eventually, it arrived and we departed, bound for Budapest. It had been hot all day again despite the rain, so we appreciated the A/C blasting into the carriage for the 3h journey.
We arrived into Budapest Keleti station a little before 10pm, it was still hot and muggy outside when we followed some garbage Google Maps directions to our AirB&B apartment (the other route we soon realised was 5-10 mins faster) and found that the main road it was on was basically the strip! Thankfully, as it was set back from the street, all the noise disappeared by the time you
got into our little courtyard area. After a bit of a struggle finding the second lock for the door in the dark (it was a self check-in process with door codes and keys left under the mat) we were in, showered (oh yeah!) made our beds and hit the hay.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.14s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 14; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0856s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb