Saturday 6th July
It was only a short bus journey today, just a little over an hour to get here from Vienna.
We walked the short distance from the bus station to our AirBnB for the night. We were staying in an apartment outside of the Old Town. The area where we were staying and where the bus stop was as well seems surprisingly modern, and business like. I think it must be the more business district of the city, which surprised me, I just assumed that it was all old and there wasn't much business going on! There is a lot of development around the bus stop area too. We walked past a lot of sky rise buildings going up to get to the apartment.
By the time we got to the apartment we were drenched in sweat because it was sweltering again. The hosts brother met us and showed us the apartment, although he admitted he didn't really know much because this was his first time seeing the apartment!
It was a typical old eastern European apartment block, rather dodgy and run down looking from the outside, but our apartment had just been renovated! We were the first people staying in it! It was amazing!! It was so brand new that the oven hadn't even finished being installed in the kitchen!
Wow! What an amazing apartment, it's one of the best ones we've stayed in! I hope we can find an apartment like this when we get a place! And it was so cheap! As soon as we'd been showed around we blasted the aircon and sat in front of it on the couch to cool down!
Once we'd cooled down and felt human again we headed out to the local grocery store that we'd passed on our way to the apartment.
Oh my goodness, food in Slovakia is SO CHEAP!! This is amazing! I mean magnums are less than a Euro each!! Less than a Euro! Now that's something you can use to base how expensive a country is!
We spent the afternoon inside chilling out on the amazing couches and planned the next place to go. The skies came over really dark looking like we might get a storm to break the heat!
The storm didn't come but it made for a cozy afternoon!
We then cooked up our dinner and curled up on the couch and watched 'Solo', the new Star Wars movie on the big tele!
Sunday 7th July
We spent the day wandering around exploring the Old Town. It is such an incredibly pretty place!
We wandered into the old town and stumbled across an umbrella street which was so beautiful with the delicate umbrellas hanging between the gorgeous old buildings!
We continued meandering through the beautiful streets until we came upon the main square with the old town hall. I love how all these European cities and towns have a central square and it's all pedestrian streets, I absolutely love it!
From here we found ourselves at a grand elegant pink building, which turns out to be a palace, the Primates Palace, from 1781. It was really cool and we could walk through the courtyards, the architecture was really interesting and seems so classic of the time.
We continued to just wander the cute little town (city), I am so surprised at how beautiful it is here, it's nothing like what I expected to find.
I think one of my favourite parts of Bratislava was the street leading up to Michael's Gate. It just had such a classic northern European feel to it, the whole town did really, I loved it!
On our wanderings we found a sweet shop that had a display in the window of a castle made entirely of boiled sweets! They also had chocolate sculptures moulded into cameras among other things!
We then walked out of the town towards Bratislava castle. On the walk out we saw a little more of what I expected, the streets seemed a little poorer and not as nice as in the town, but still felt so rich in culture.
On the way out to the castle we saw the impressive St Martins cathedral and the strange, but aptly named, UFO bridge.
It was so hot again today, so the climb up the steep hill to the castle was slow and at many points I questioned whether it was really worth it, it was! It was such a cool castle, simple but really cool. And the view from the top over the Danube River was impressive!
The entrance to the castle was so cool, there were great big columns with gold statues on top, it was all so grand! As usual we were quite happy to see the castle from the outside , but there was one section inside that Sam was interested in seeing so we thought we'd just have a look and see how much it was. Everything else in Slovakia is so cheap so maybe this will be too! Well, you'll never guess our luck, entrance into the castle is free today! What a bonus!!
It was quite a cool castle, quite literally, which was such a nice reprieve from the heat if nothing else! Like I said, it's a fairly simple castle from the outside, and that was reflected inside, but it was stunning in a simplistic way. It was amazing, the entire interior was a simple white with gold filigree trimmings, and it had beautiful grand staircases with red runner carpets and gold trimmings, with huge mirrors hung at every landing. It was so grand and I felt so special, like a princess walking through it!
There was an exhibition on the lower floor which was interesting, all about the history of Bratislava and the castle too!
We made our way up the castle and to one of the turrets and climbed the worlds steepest stairs, before it became a ladder, to the very tippity top of the castle, we were at the highest point in the highest tower! As we climbed though it got hotter and hotter and the tippity top was like a sauna! We didn't last long up there! It was so cool to be at the very top of one of the turrets, it's the first time we've actually been able to fully explore one of them out of all the castles we've seen! And the view from up here was absolutely stunning!!
Once we'd climbed our way back down to the main building of the castle and cooled off again in the aircon we explored a bit more before heading out to try and get some footage of the exterior with the drone. We got the drone up ok but it was windy af! It is the only point of the trip that I thought we might actually lose the drone. Sam had it on full power trying to bring it back into us but the wind was at the same speed so it wasn't moving! It was on a huge angle just stuck in the air, eventually Sam, being the great pilot he is managed to bring the drone home and he went safely back in the backpack!
Unable to get the bird eye view drone shots we'd hoped for we headed for a walk across the UFO bridge (on the pedestrian under-walk) where we said hi to the Danube, and we got stunning views looking back at the castle on the hill!
We meandered our way back through the beautiful, beautiful town and back to our apartment via the grocery store, and yes we did get a less than 1 euro magnum to cool down! We just chilled out for the evening enjoying where we were! What a lovely surprise of a city!
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