Day 261: Banska Stiavnica

No driving today, which is a nice change! Unfortunately for us the cafe from last night was closed, which was a shame since their pancakes looked really nice and we'd wanted that for breakfast. Instead we had to settle for a cafe that only had pre-made paninis available - it was pretty slim pickings today as it was All Saints Day and many places were shut.

Banska Stiavnica is a mining town up in the mountains of Slovakia, where gold and silver were once mined. It was a very wealthy town back in the day, and there were still remnants of that around - fancy buildings and so on. Two different castles as well, both erected to defend the town against Turkish raids (as a gold mine it was a lucrative target).

Wandered around and did some filming, checked out the castles, a couple of churches, the main streets and squares, and also a small example of the mines that had been preserved. It's not like other mining sites where a big trip underground is the main part of the experience.

Wrapped up filming around lunchtime, grabbed a couple of freshly-made baguettes from a sandwich place that were quite nice and ate them in the sun - yes it was actually sunny! Feeling done and in need of a break, we headed back to our room and settled in on laptops. Unfortunately the hotel wifi was atrocious, so instead we packed up and went to a trendy cafe back out on the main street where we stayed for the rest of the afternoon!

For dinner we went to a pizza place on the corner of the main street - it had pretty poor ratings but the food was better than expected! Very large pizzas, and tasty enough. It's hard to get pizza very wrong I guess.Read more