Bratislava

Dan: We arrived in Bratislava after quite a pleasant journey on a posh train but we weren't too impressed with the area immediately surrounding the station as it looked a bit rough. After a short walk to our accommodation we reached a pedestrian area within the main city which looks much nicer. After getting settled the first thing we did was nip to the river to see how high it was due to the recent central Europe floods. The river is usually 4 metres deep but we were told it was currently 10 metres. Luckily there were some pretty nifty flood defense barriers in place, but they didn't stop a lower portion on the river side being flooded which made for some quite surreal sights seeing benches and trees half submerged. We've been keeping a close eye on the news and it's got us a bit worried since our planned route takes us to Prague and Dresden which are either already flooded or at high risk of it.

We did some shopping (almost relieved to go back to converting Euros rather than dividing by 350 to calculate a pound) and bought some tea and snacks at decent prices while we still can.

On our first full day we decided to take a walk up to the castle. We were very pleased that the sun complete with blue sky decided to make an appearance, which we haven't been familiar with for about 3 weeks. A good day up to this point usually consisted of overcast cloud with slight drizzle. After sitting around the castle grounds looking at the views and absorbing the sun we had a walk across one of the large bridges across the river and sat in a park that had been spared by flooding to eat some snacks and get a better look of the flooded riverside.

We decided to eat out in the evening as we had a recommendation to go to a Slovak pub just down the road from where we were staying. Sally ate a garlic soup in a bowl made out of bread while I had some potato dumplings with some sort of strong-flavoured sausage which was good considering it cost less than 5 euros. We each had a beer which also came recommended, even though my general opinion is that it tastes like feet sweat mixed with fags; to be fair it was relatively good. I then decided to order something with pork which turned out to be strips of pork battered and topped off with lemon which also went down well.

We spend our second day looking at a memorial dedicated to fallen Soviet soldiers of World War 2. After the treacherous hill climb in the heat we decided to chill out in a nearby park and read while further enjoying the weather.

We cooked in again for our evening meal then went for one last stroll around the historic centre, then one last look at the swollen river.

I like it here as it's a nice looking place with quite a lot to see, but it's not bustling with people like the larger and more well known cities.