The Rest of Slovakia and Hungary

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May 28:

Before leaving the Bratislava area we went to Devin Castle on the banks of the Danube. It is a relatively small but nice ruined castle, one of the many for which Slovakia is famous. All the castles are up on fortified hills for protection – it makes sense strategically, but not in terms of construction – lugging those rocks up the hill would have been a nightmare!

In the afternoon we drove to the famous thermal baths area of Slovakia (Hotel Giga Besenova) for a spa evening. We tried to stop at a little town on the way to briefly explore and have lunch, but due to the pouring rain shower we never made it out of the mall that our parking garage was under. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening taking advantage of the thermal baths, which we practically had to ourselves. It is the low season between the high ski season (on the nearby small hills) and the summer tourist season.



May 29: The next morning we explored nearby Vlkolinec, a traditional mountain village. I’m sure in the summer it gets touristy, but when we were there in the morning we were the only tourists that had managed to find our way through the valleys to the town (no thanks to Francesca who instead chose to lead us to some Communist-era apartment buildings…). The highlight was the gallery of the town, basically just a little shop selling local crafts. The old couple that worked there were absolutely lovely and we had a full conversation, us speaking in English, them in Slovakian, all of us in sign language. They even played one of the traditional instruments for us. I think usually people don’t make an effort to talk to them because of the language barrier, so they enjoyed attempting to communicate with us. They have a map where they mark where all the tourists are from and we were the first from Alaska (there weren’t very many from the rest of the US either). They were so excited that they got out the ladder right then and there and let us post the flag ourselves, After sampling the grapefruit beer and the local mead (both surprisingly delicious) we continued on our way.

We stopped at Svaty Kriz, a huge wooden church – one of the largest wooden constructions in all of central Europe. It was relocated due to flooding from the building of a dam and so some reconstruction/preservation was done, but it was still really cool. Massive for the size of the town that it is in, but really neat that it was made completely out of wood. One of the more unique churches we’ve seen.

Then we drove to the High Tatras Mountains and explored the Stary Smokovec area a little bit before heading to the Ginger Monkey Hostel in Zdiar. These mountains are real mountains! The mountain range is pretty small and straddles the border between Slovakia and Poland, but the actual mountains themselves are pretty good sized. Since we were so close to Poland, naturally we decided we needed to go check it out. Thanks to the Schengen zone it was easy to do. We went to Zakopane for the evening and dinner. As soon as we crossed the border the style of housing changed. It was crazy! The Polish really like their roofs – every house was full of gables and multi-layered roofs. Also the currency difference was impressive. Everything was much cheaper than just across the border in Slovakia. We drove around Zakopane and then found the main downtown street full of restaurants with live music. It is a typical ski town, so very touristy with a central area full of restaurants and outdoor clothing shops, but since it is in-between season right now (too late for skiing, a little early for hiking) there were less people and more locals. The Slovakia side was even more dead and a lot of the restaurants were closed (one of the reasons we went over to Poland). We thoroughly enjoyed our short sojourn into Poland.



May 30:

We’ve been having great weather most of our trip, so naturally the day that we take the cable car up to the top of the mountain is was so cloudy and foggy that we could not see a thing. Bummer. We then hiked from the halfway point of the cable car over to another cable car that took us back down to Stary Smokovec. The hike was relatively short and pretty popular, but beautiful with views out over the rest of the countryside and back at the mountains when they occasionally peaked through the clouds. We walked through the forest and a valley before going back up on the other side and ending with views of the mountains we had gone up earlier. This was our day of hobbit meals – first breakfast at the hostel, second breakfast at the top of the mountain (hot chocolate), eleven-sies at the midway point (garlic soup and bean soup), luncheon at the mountain hut partway through our hike (lentil soup and sauerkraut soup), afternoon tea at the bottom of the cable car in Stary Smokovec, and then we combined dinner and supper into one amazingly delicious meal at the big hotel on the top of the hill in Stary Smokovec (amazing food, good wine, and delicious dessert!). Yum!



May 31:

Back in the car. We drove to Levoca today, with a stop at the Dunajec Gorge for a quick hike along the river. Gorgeous weather. From Levoca the main attraction is the Spiss Castle, one of the largest castles and Central Europe and supposedly the most impressive in Slovakia. As usual, it is perched on the top of a hill and the best views are from a little ways away when you can see its massive shape. Probably the coolest ruined castle any of us have ever been to. We didn’t get to see it with the sun on it (weather still not cooperating…) but it was still impressive.

Levoca itself is sold as one of the most beautiful ancient towns in Slovakia and it was nice, but we preferred some of the other ones we had previously seen. We went into the church (Gothic Church of St. Jacob), which has the tallest altar piece in Europe and wandered around a bit (Hotel U Leva – very nice!).



June 1-3: Pecs and Budapest

On to Hungary! Stopover in Eger to briefly explore the town (pretty neat to see, but a couple hours was sufficient). The town itself is nice, but it is famous for its wine. One side of town is full of wine cellars in little almost-caves in the side of the hill. Most are tourist, of course, but we found one with a little old man that was a little more out of the way with less signs and people trying to get you to enter. Plus he spoke not a word of English – just what we were looking for! We sampled his wine and managed to have a full conversation with him ranging from Europe to Alaska to the wine to Obama to who knows what else, him speaking in Hungarian and occasionally German, us in English, everyone in sign/gesture language. All the locals get their wine from these places as well – they come with 2 liter plastic bottles and get them filled up. Relatively cheap but good local wine!

We got to Budapest and after some confusion found the hostel (Francesca didn’t know that she was trying to make us drive down pedestrian only streets…). We stayed at Hostel Maverick – definitely one of the nicest hostels I’ve ever been to! There aren’t bunk beds in the dorms, just single beds which is amazingly nice, and the rooms were pretty spacious. In the evening we went on a little cruise down the river and saw the whole city lit up at night.

The next two days we explored Budapest – one of my favorite large cities in Europe. It reminded us more of Paris than of Bratislava and Prague. There are lots of things to see and they are relatively spread out, but even just the normal streets are nice to wander through. We went up to the castle complex with its amazing church, Fisherman’s Bastion with great views over the city, the citadel, toured the lavish Opera House, absorbed the culture in cafes and restaurants, saw the end of a double wedding in the cathedral, ooohed and ahhhed over the architecture of the Parliament building, saw Bruce Willis filming another Die Hard movie in one of the main squares (yes we even saw him and his bald head!), explored the Ruin Bars, and experienced the bathes (Rudas Bathes were nice and less huge and touristy than most of the ones we heard of – the massage experiences ranged from nice (Delana) to extremely painful (Eryn) depending on which person you were lucky enough to get). Our last evening Delana and I joined our parents on their river cruise boat for one last dinner and folk dance show. Good food and entertainment. The main singer and dancer of the show decided to use our family as his audience participation members so mom and I were thoroughly kissed on the cheeks, and Dad and I were dragged up at different times to participate in the dancing. Not sure how Delana escaped that…

Then the next day our parents continued down the river and Delana and I hopped on our train to head south to Pecs! We had a great two weeks with our parents! Thank you for joining us all the way in Europe!

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Comments

[Rosene]

Hobbit meals
Great commentary on a very fun trip. Especially loved that day of Hobbit meals!