Slovakia - Bratislava

16th November 2014

Leaving Budapest, we took a 3-hour ride to Bratislava. It was a really bad day for me, as it was raining (freezing) and I had cramps. The weather was really depressing, and we skipped the city tour as usual. I was just desperate to find somewhere nice and warm to sit down and rest.

We found a really great Chinese restaurant while walking downhill towards the Old Town. We had a lot of food, like soups, duck, black pepper beef, 土豆丝, and there was even 毛血旺!! I was quite surprised to find this in Europe. We ordered way too much food, but we kind of finished everything, so I was ultra bloated. Even the boss was shocked at our great appetites... Hahaha. The meal wasn't cheap, about 19€ per person, but I'm guessing it was because we ordered too much and the 毛血旺 was probably quite expensive. Nevertheless, I thought the money was well spent and I was super satisfied with the meal.

We continued walking towards the Old Town. It wasn't far, just across the small bridge.

A good view of the city from uphill, but the entire city was veiled by a thick layer of fog. 

If you go up the slope from here, you'll find great cafés.

The Old Town.

Somehow, this reminds me of China in the 90s.

The thing you see on the bridge is called UFO! There is a nice restaurant 85m above ground level, and an observation deck 10m up from the restaurant. The entrance fee was 4.35€ for students, and we took a lift up. The lift seemed similar to the one at the Eiffel Tower, since it went up in a slanted path. In the UFO, we often felt vibrations due to the movement of the lift and the wind! Pretty scary at first.

Nice ambience.

View from the deck. Still foggy!

We stayed there till 7pm! LOL. We got so comfortable up there, plus there was Wi-Fi. So you could imagine :P I ordered a Cappuccino and a huge waffle, which C and Y promised to help me eat but they didn't!!! I stuffed the whole thing down even though I was still full from lunch. It was a great waffle (with cream, bananas, strawberries) so how could I resist :P

The most prominent modern building in the vicinity!

I went up to the deck to get some night views of the city, hoping that it would help to redeem itself as the capital city. Well, the view wasn't too bad, but not very impressive either. I guess the city doesn't really have many iconic buildings to begin with, so the views just seemed a bit mediocre.

We headed to the huge shopping centre (the modern building above) just across the bridge. It was really quite big and nice inside. Reminds me of ION! Best news for us was that there was KFC inside! Haha! The KFC there was really really cheap, like you could get 20 wings for about 10€ (can't remember exactly but about there). On the same level, there were Subway and other fast food restaurants that had really cheap stuff.

After dinner, we went to a café to get free Wi-Fi and continued derping till 9pm when we headed back to the castle to assemble and go home. The bus was half an hour late again and I really wanted to punch them.

Bratislava has a really strange mix of old and modern architecture. When we first entered the outskirts of the city, there were a lot of colourful buildings that looked like HDB flats! Even surrounding the Old Town, there were some relatively modern buildings alternating amongst the remnants of the medieval town.

I was quite surprised to find out that there are actually a lot of tour groups that go to Bratislava (as we heard from the Chinese restaurant boss). I haven't heard of Bratislava before, to be honest. I know Slovakia, but what's the capital city? No idea. It was still a good experience I guess. It's rare that travellers like us could get to see something so vastly different from the usual elegance and magnificence of popular tourist destinations in Europe.