OMG OMG OMG! We finally visited Slovakia!! One of my dream countries to visit for years!
Yes, I know it’s a fairly obscure dream destination, but as far as I’m concerned, it should be on everyone’s list. It’s a small country with beautiful scenery, nice people, good food and good shopping. Public transport is efficient and the buildings (at least the ones built before Soviet times) are very pretty. We didn’t see anything not to like about Bratislava, even if we did only stay there for two nights.
Coming from Marseille, Josh and I couldn’t help but notice the cleanliness and distinct lack of trotinettes. And on top of that, cars actually respected zebra crossings and were polite to pedestrians and fellow drivers! And everything was so much more affordable than in France! I could go on espousing every virtue of this city, but I will restrain myself now.
A short distance from the bus station where we arrived from Vienna, we stumbled across a very unique church – namely, the Church and Convent of St Elisabeth, or simply, the “Blue Church,” for reasons that will become obvious when you click on the link. It looked like a gigantic, church-shaped cake with blue and white icing. Really cool, although it was closed and we weren’t able to go inside.
The plan was then to go to a nearby shopping centre and buy a pair of winter boots for Josh, but we got as far as looking at the selection of boots on display and then decided we were way too travel weary for that sort of decision making. We managed to procure boots the next day 🙂
We spent some time wandering the old town of Bratislava and found both a small exhibition of sustainable fashion, with clothing made from poppy seeds, and also the Slovak National Gallery, which was free to enter and check out the art. It was a small building and it didn’t take too long to have a look at everything. The art was very… contemporary. Josh was not impressed, but each to their own I say.
There were two Christmas markets in Bratislava, each selling generally the same sort of thing. You could buy hot mulled wines, in such flavours as honey and ginger, black cherry, or plum, along with many others, as well as traditional Slovak treats. There were hand-knitted gloves, socks and beanies, toys, glassware, ceramics, soaps, candles and Christmas decorations. Mostly though it was all about the food and drinks! At night time, which was really from about 3:30-4:00, the atmosphere was really wintery and lovely.
Being travel-weary, all we really wanted to do was to find some quiet little cafe and sit down over a nice hot chocolate. It took us a while but we eventually stumbled across a sign for one and gratefully went in out of the cold.
If I can say one thing about Bratislava, it’s that they do hot chocolates RIGHT. I think it must be one of those cold climate sorts of things but there was no pussy footing around with these drinks. In fact, desserts would probably be a better word than drinks. Think mousse-like, rich dark chocolate, topped with a healthy swirling of whipped cream and served piping hot in a glass mug. Ooh it was medicinal after wandering around in the frosty air for the past few hours.
Since other customers in this cafe-bar were smoking inside we finished our dessert-drinks more hastily than I would have preferred, in favour of finding somewhere without cigarette smoke. Alas, the highly atmospheric underground pub we found was also smoking so we figured we would just have to deal with it… over massive glasses of Czech beer!
That was our first day in Bratislava! It’s a pretty great place, wouldn’t you agree?
Seven Months in Marseille 