Bratislava in the Rain

Before I talk about my eventful day in the Slovak capital city of Bratislava, I'd like to share my pictures from the 4-day stay in Vienna here: http://bit.ly/oLeKIs

Today, I basically learned that Bratislava is a nice, little city that can be explored to a large extent in a single day. After a delicious breakfast at our hotel, we went out to the plaza in front of our hotel to look for a good tour of the city. In Vienna, we learned about a tour that ridiculously charged 40 euros, and when we asked how much bus tours costed, we learned that they were 30 euros per person. Luckily, we found a tour on a train-like bus (pictured above) that only charged 10 euros per person with an English guide, so we decided to go for it.

This was in fact, a great decision. In our part of the bus there was only one other group, and the guide was actually a person who would talk to us and show us the city. Because of this, we had a nice one-on-one tour where we could ask questions and learn a lot. We drove around the entire city, seeing the old town, many churches, and the Bratislava Hrad Castle. At the Hrad Castle, we stopped for about 15 minutes for another great panorama of the city. After that, we drove along the Danube and then concluded our tour back in the Old Town. I learned some basic history about the city, as well as the entire country.

After this tour, we decided to go to recommended museum called the Police Museum. To get there, we would have to go on a good walk through the Old Town and pass the Presidential Palace. When we passed by the Presidential Palace, it just happened to be at the time of the changing of the guards, so I got to see the traditional ceremony occur. When we finally got to the Police museum, we were confused, as the lights in the entrance hall were off and the receptionist was sleeping. After he woke up and we asked about the police museum he said in Slovakian: "No, the police is in the next building." When we repeated "museum" he said "Oh" and then made a phone call. A lady then showed up and unlocked the museum and turned on the lights. At this point, we thought it was going to be a disaster but the museum was actually very nicely set up and had a variety of interesting artifacts and exhibits. The only problem was a lack of English, but I still got to the uniforms, weapons, and tools used by the Police throughout the decades.

After the museum, we walked further away from the Old City to "rehearse" our public transportation trip to the airport tomorrow. After a bit of walking, we determined where we would change from our tram stop the airport bus, so we wouldn't have to do it with many bags in the rain. We then took a tram to the hotel for a short break. Next, we walked to a nearby church known as the Blue Church for its external appearance, but it was closed. We then walked to the more famous church, St. Martin's cathedral, and went inside to walk around for a bit. We saw an interesting treasury, as well as a historical crypt from the 1100s.

By now, we were quite hungry so we walked around looking for a place to eat. In this time, we explored all of the Old Town and its interesting courtyards and architecture. We eventually settled for a generic lunch restaurant where I had a hamburger with some absolutely delicious french fries while my dad had pork with wild mushrooms. Before returning to the hotel for a break, we had a quick pastry dessert at a nearby cafe. Unfortunately at this point, the drizzle that was going on throughout the day became a downpour so we had to go back to the hotel. We wanted to go to a Japanese music concert sponsored by the Japanese embassy in the main square, but it was cancelled due to the rain. Since the rain was closing down the entire city, we decided to just wait at the hotel until around 8PM.

It was still rainy outside but we were hungry, so we decided to look for a place to eat. We eventually settled at the Sushi+ Japanese restaurant across the street from the Japanese embassy. The food was actually absolutely delicious, and was the best Japanese restaurant I've ever eaten at. I had large piece or chicken cut into bite-sized slices with teriyaki sauce and rice. Even after the restaurant it was raining, so we decided just to go back to the hotel. Tomorrow, I'll be waking up at 7AMto fly into Dublin, Ireland, spending our last three days there.