Bratislava - July 7

So, hmmm, what did we do in Bratislava? We were excited to be going to Slovakia, but not exactly sure what we would do there. We left Vienna early in the morning, and stored our stuff at the train station in the lockers since we were only going for the day. Our expectations were to discover eastern europe and see run down type things from back before the iron curtain fell haha - if you've ever seen the movie 'Eurotrip' then you understand...

this is how we imagined/wanted Bratislava to look haha

When we arrived in Bratislava, we had to take a bus into the city, and it was like 10 cents or something ridiculously cheap like that... and we went past these huge old apartment buildings... very 'iron curtain' we thought (see above) but actually Bratislava turned out to be rather nice. We walked through the old part of the city and went up to the castle, which was high above the city on a hill. On the way there we stopped for lunch and Slovakian beer, always a win. Our waiter was so nice, and said 'please' after everything, even when it didn't apply or make sense. When we got up to the castle, we had nice views over the city, and of this cool bridge that looks a bit like a UFO... I think its called the Millineum Falcom or Battleship Galactica or something like that, I can't remember :)

We spent the rest of the day strolling around and seeing the sights on our handy tourist map - we saw some churches, the American Embassy, and the parliament building, and shortly after, the rain began. Kasey found a pamphlet about the Euro, since Slovakia is switching soon, which excited her (strange friends I have!). Because of the rain, we decided to start heading back towards the train station, a different one this time, that we could walk to, and it was raining a ton. Miserable, but it seemed like a good dreary Eastern Europe experience at least haha. On the way, we saw the presidents house and the cool gardens behind it and took some pictures there. When we finally made it to the train station, we had pizza and soda while we waiting for the train. I had Fanta in a glass bottle and it was soooo good, I kept the bottle as my Slovakian souveneir, it'll make a cute little flower vase I hope! We hopped on our train back to Vienna feeling like we had accomplish our Bratislava goals :)

famous manhole statue on a random corner

American Embassy

Grassalkovich Presidential Palace