Bratislava, Slovakia

We made an impromptu trip to Slovakia today. This is something we had considered prior to leaving for Europe but didn't do any research until we were frantically trying to arrange transportation and things to do on the tablet the night before. Not an ideal situation and our lack of planning would become apparent. We walked to the pier and bought tickets for the Danube River Catamaran with Twin City Liner. They had advertised departures at 8:30 and 9:00 and we were shooting for the earlier time. They had us take the metro to another location and luckily we found the second pier. Cost was 35 euro each for the reserved seating (all that was remaining last minute). The air was foggy at first but burned off quickly and by the time we were really moving, we could actually see our surroundings. The trip to Bratislava was advertised as 75 minutes (which we had planned our day around), but actually took an hour longer than that (with no explanation). The sailing was comfortable and included a trip through a lock. The delay caused us to miss a walking tour we had planned.

Anyway, we arrived in Old Town and walked to lunch at Bratislavsky Mestiansky Pivovar. We got a sausage appetizer, followed by goulash for me and Chrenovka (beef with horseradish) for Myron. The food was very tasty. The waitress spoke limited English but enough to communicate. The prices were very good.

We walked to St. Margaret's Blue Church which was gorgeous. It was closed but we could still view inside and take photos. The church was one of the most beautiful we have seen. We wandered around the city, viewing statues, souvenir shopping, seeing the old city walls, castle, UFO bridge and views of Bratislava. We stopped for gelato at Koun which was very good. The graffiti and street art were very diverse and interesting.

To return to Vienna, we decided on the Blaguss bus at 4:15, which was cheap at 7.50 euro per person and should have taken 1 hr. We had read good things about this bus but it arrived 20 minutes late and took 3 hr to make the 1 hr journey to Vienna due to border traffic from the Syrian migrant crisis. The police were doing random vehicle checks and traffic was backed up for miles! We ended up arriving back in Vienna at 7:25. We attempted to do laundry at Green & Clean but the machine was not accepting bills and was located in a residential neighborhood so we had nowhere to break our bills.

Frustrated and annoyed, we headed back to the hotel where we got room service for dinner. We both got tomato & mozzarella sandwiches and french fries. We packed and went to bed at 11pm.Read more