TRAVEL DIARY: BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA

DATE OF VISIT: October 25th 2017

when i visited bratislava for the first time in 2016 during a college weekend trip i didn’t get to see a lot of the city because we were all more focused on finding alcohol than exploring the city. shame on us! so when i found out that my boyfriend and i were eligible for a free danube cruise from vienna to bratislava i immediately signed us up!

okay sooo now i’m just going to tell you eeeeverything about our cruise to and day in bratislava (which is probably going to be a lot of blah-blah). but anyway – here we gooo:

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at 8:30 in the morning my boyfriend and i boarded the MS KAISERIN ELISABETH II which holds up to 600 people on three decks. at 9:00 the ship finally cast off towards bratislava. on board we had breakfast and just enjoyed the great view on lower austria’s nature.

after 3 hours we arrived at the pier in bratislava. since i knew we’d only have a few hours in bratislava – 3 to be exact – before the ship would head back to vienna i created a walking route (which you can see here) for us a few days before our trip. the walking tour was supposed to take us like 1h20 to complete so i thought with stopping for pictures and grabbing lunch everything would work out perfectly. spoiler alert: it did not. more about that later though.

we started our walking tour at the harbor and made our way up to the BRATISLAVA CASTLE which is located on a hill above the old town and offers a georgeous view over bratislava. we also loooved strolling through the beautiful, newly renovated baroque gardens at the back side of the castle!

up on the castle hill we also had lunch at the RESTAURANT PARLAMENT which – you won’t believe it! – is located right next to the parliament building. what we loved about the restaurant were the huuuge windows so we could have lunch and also enjoy the great view over bratislava and the danube river. also our food was suuuper yummy!

before making our way into the old town we also passed a few other historic buildings like the GRASSALKOVICH PRESIDENTIAL PALACE (which was under contruction unfortunately) and the ST. ELIZABETH’S CHURCH which is famous for being painted entirely in blue.

after that we were off to explore bratislava’s old town, called staré mesto, where we were able to see the ST. MICHAEL’S TOWER & GATE, the JESUIT CHURCH, the PRIMATES PALACE,  the OLD TOWN HALL, the famous ČUMIL statue and the beautiful ST. MARTIN’S CATHEDRAL.

old town

čumil

st. michael’s tower & gate

primates palace

jesuit church + old town hall

st. martin’s cathedral

after exploring bratislava’s old town we realized that we wereso fascinated by all the beautiful buildings and things to see that we completely lost track of time and missed our ship back to vienna. we were still strolling through bratislava when we should have actually already been on the ship!

good thing there’s a direct train connection from bratislava so we just walked to the train station in bratislava and took the train back to vienna. that actually only took us 1hr while taking the ship would’ve taken us 6hrs!!! so we got more time to explore bratislava plus we were home earlier than expected. and we also got to walk across the NOVÝ MOST BRIDGE where you can also find the famous UFO OBSERVATION DECK on our way to the trainstation.

at 8pm we then arrived back in vienna – earlier than the ship but with a few extra hours in bratislava! we really really had a great day in vienna’s twin city and will for sure come back sometime. especially since it’s so close to and easy to reach from vienna!

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have you ever been to bratislava? and if yes did you love it as much as we did? what did you like best about the city? tell me in the comments. ↓

XX LISA