Bratislava

       
          Sometimes, traveling without a plan for your day, and without being in a rush to SEE AND DO EVERYTHING is the best way to travel.  Yesterday morning, a group of 11 of us, took a cheap bus to Bratislava, Slovakia (Bratislava and Vienna are the two closest capital cities in the world)and arrived without any idea as to what we were going to do. And we ended up really enjoying ourselves!





          Slovakia used to be part of Austria, so many of the buildings, and especially the cathedral, looked very Austrian. I found it to be a beautiful, and (at least during the day) relatively quiet city.
So many car-less streets, beautiful buildings, and cute restaurants. Only saw about 3 tourist shops. And they were rather understated..(very different from what we found in London in that respect! ha!)

So after roaming the streets, we figured, while we were here...might as well check out the castle at the top of the hill!

So we trekked up to the Bratislava Castle which provided a gorgeous view of the city and the Danube River. It also proved to be sehr windig, and provided me with a fabulous new blustery hair-do.

There were also some Roman ruins, where apparently quite a bit of gold was dug up a while back.  --We could've taken a 30-minute bus ride outside of the city to see more ruins (which I voted for!) but the bus schedules didn't work out. We would've had to wait for a much later bus back to Vienna if we did that.

Bratislava Castle

the view!

      Then we wandered back downtown in search of an inexpensive place to eat for lunch. (not hard to find!)
      We even had hot chocolate afterward at a place called Bon Bon that Tomas recommended...but let me clarify: their idea of hot chocolate is literally MELTED CHOCOLATE. I probably don't need to tell you how delicious it was.

 Bratislava was a very fun, spontaneous day! Woohoo!!