We woke up a bit later than usual and paid the price in the breakfast room. Everyone at the hotel needed to have shown a vaccination record or recent negative test result, but neither of us like a crowd regardless. There was a line of seven to make waffles. Flustered and overwhelmed we managed to grab a couple tiny croissants and a yogurt. After breakfast, we hopped on the subway a few stops to Schottenring. From there it was a short walk to the Rathaus, the location of the large Christmas Market that turned us into icicles during our previous visit in December 2016.
Now it is serving as a venue for the Vienna Film Festival. We continued our walk and explored the flowers in the Volksgarten as well as some nearby statues and structures.
After cutting back through the park, we decided to take the subway back to the amusement park area known as the Prater. We thought we might take a ride on the big Ferris wheel which featured in the James Bond film, The Living Daylights. We queued up, showed our vaccination cards and had to fill out a contact tracing form. Nicole ran ahead to see that this was just one line of many and perhaps this wasn’t the best use of our time considering we had to check out of the hotel in an hour. Next time . . .
We got our car and found ourselves back on the highway pointed east. In an hour, we were crossing into Slovakia. Good thing we didn’t do this trip before 1993, when it was part of Czechoslovakia. It would have been a shame to get short changed in the country count. Now we get two where there was once one. We drove across the bridge with the iconic “UFO” on top of it and were soon at the Radisson Blu in Bratislava.
Our first order of business was to get food for lunch, so naturally I led us to sweets and pastries. We each had cinnamon rolls and split a cream cake. This seems to be a popular item as everyone around us seemed to have one. We had a cake like this in Lake Bled, Slovenia, where they claimed that was the only place you could get it. Such cakes seem to be pretty common . . .everywhere, however.
We then walked around the old town for a spell. It is smartly pedestrian-only, which makes walking a lot easier. It’s hard enough to dodge Slovakian pedestrians, who seem to aim for me even when our paths may not have otherwise crossed.
While Bratislava isn’t dead, it certainly has fewer tourists than our previous cities of Prague and Vienna. It was nice to have this more relaxed atmosphere as we walked around. We eventually stumbled upon the Franciscan Monastery, which is the oldest religious building in Bratislava. It was kind of unassuming from the outside, but we stepped in to explore.
As it turns out, there was a lot to explore. Beyond the church and courtyard, there was also a crypt to descend into, and tower to climb. The steps were very narrow. Luckily Nicole and I were the only ones doing it, so we didn’t have to worry about opposite direction traffic at any point. We got nice views from the top, but they put up the metal fencing that drives me crazy, so it was hard to get a decent photo without the mesh.
From there we continued our walk out of the old town and headed toward some old communist architecture. There is an old fountain at Námestie Slobody, which has essentially just become a sad looking plaza. Evidently it was constructed so badly, the water in the fountain never really worked right and just led to cracks and leaks. There are a few architectural design sites in Bratislava that were meant to look futuristic, but now look a bit . . .dated, not unlike Dulles Airport.
We traipsed from one eyesore to the next. Just around the corner from the plaza, was the state tv building, which was built as an inverted pyramid. It is regarded by the locals as the ugliest building in Bratislava, but it has its own charms.
From there we worked our way back to the much more photogenic and less gritty old town Bratislava. We had pizzas for dinner before doing our obligatory tchotchke shopping. Since our hotel doesn’t include breakfast, we also made a quick stop at a Lidl for some croissants and other snacks. After dropping off our goods at the hotel, we went out once more at night to have a look at the bridge.
The “UFO” is actually a revolving restaurant. We strolled a bit more back through old town which was now very very active with people eating and drinking at the many cafés. Nicole got me some gelato because I was a really good boy today. Mine was flavored with Kinder Bueno chocolate, and it was delightful. After this busy day, we went back to the hotel to relax before a long drive up to Poland tomorrow.
passports & pepto bismol 