Slovakia in a Day
I love how close the countries are in Europe, because it makes it so quick and easy to travel to a ton of different ones! Since we were staying in Vienna we decided to make a day trip out to Bratislava, Slovakia. The bus ride only took an hour and provided some beautiful sights like this one:
There were fields upon fields of windmills!
How to get from Vienna to Bratislava
The easiest and cheapest way to get from Vienna to Bratislava is by bus. You can take a train or a boat ride on the Danube, but the prices go up a lot. The best way we figured out to get to Bratislava is using Eurolines website. Set departure from Vienna VIB (which you get to by taking the metro to Erdberg and walk across the street) and set arrival to Bratislava, Bus stop, Most SNP (Novy Most). Novy Most is the bus stop in the middle of town just below the castle.
When we arrived in Bratislava we had about 8 hours to see everything in the area on foot. We hiked up to the Bratislava castle, which only took about 10 minutes. It looked great up on the hill and proved to be an awesome lookout point.
It had to have been at least 80° and these guards were decked out in the sun
After seeing the outside of the castle we hiked over to the Slavín War Memorial that was up another gigantic hill, but with a great view as well.
An upside down building!
Grassalkovich Palace
At this point we were a tad bit tired of walking up steep hills in the 80° plus weather so we were thrilled that it was all downhill from there. When we got down to what we thought was the town square but turned out to be a palace it was time to relax, and I dipped my feet in the cold fountain (couldn’t resist).
As we started walking more we realized that this was the actual Old Town Square:
All this searching and sightseeing was making us famished! We found a local authentic Slovak Restaurant and tried some of the locally recommended food- the vepřo-knedlo-zelo (Pork with Dumplings and Cabbage) was tasteful. Since it was such a hot day, and everyone else was walking around with them, we had to have some zmrzlina (pretty much like an ice cream). It was delicious and helped boost our energy for the time being.
With food in our bellies we were ready to continue our hunt for exciting finds. We think we found them:
Church of St. Elisabeth, or more commonly called “Blue Church”
There were so many churches, but we were impressed with the old style and how cool they looked
UFO Bridge
It came time for us to get to our bus, but it had been fun traveling to a country for a day.
Thanks Bratislava!
Have you ever traveled to a different country for a day? What was it like?
I love the “country in a day” idea. That’s the cool thing about Europe. The palace and the clock tower are awesome 🙂
It was really fun! We are looking into doing a day in Slovenia as well. We keep seeing images for Bled Castle and you know how we are with Castles!