It’s funny how you can get used to sleeping in a strange place so quickly. It’s especially funny how well you can sleep when you are in an allegedly *** hotel (doesn’t sh*t have 4 letters?) where the mattress is stuffed into a box on the floor and you are on the 10th floor of a building with no double glazing when it’s blowing a gale outside? Can you tell the 70’s kitsch novelty is starting to wane a little? I just have to think back to how much this is all costing, and my perspective is thankfully skewed back to the reality that the room is costing less than pizza for two in Oslo.

Actually, I’m quite happy with the hotel – but being happy with everything doesn’t make good copy, right?

So… I slept well! Breakfast was an extensive array of cereals, breads, cold meats and cheeses, pastries, bacon, sausages, scrambled eggs, dumplings and chicken legs (yes indeedy – chicken drumsticks and dumplings for breakfast).

One of the things I’m still educating Nigel about is that there’s no need for rushing. Yes, we have more need for speed than the average backpacking couple who can spend hours, days weeks or even months in a place if the mood so takes them; and yes, we have 48 hours in the city before our harp-decorated winged chariot whisks us back to reality, but it really is all relative. We can do what we WANT to do on these brief escapes away, and not what we think we SHOULD do because we only have limited time. If we want to wake at 9am and spend an hour lingering over breakfast before heading down to the bus stop by 10.20am, then that’s darn-well what we’ll do! We are on holiday after all, and time spent beating the pavement must be relative to what there actually is to see in a place. The LP reliably informs me that 2 days (one of which is literally to ‘wonder around the streets of the Old Town’) is enough, and two days is what we have, so no dramas.

Miraculously, the rain had stopped when we made our way from the hotel to the bus stop we needed on the other side of the Old Town. The destination was Devín Castle, about 25 minutes bus journey from Bratislava. The first task of the day was finding the right bus. There seemed to be two options, and working out which one to take when you don’t speak Slovak had us debating in the bus shelter, until an old lady tugged at my coat sleeve and gestured towards the number 28 bus approaching.

We hopped on, and it whisked us away from the city centre, and out through the suburbs (we seem to be being ‘whisked’ about quite a bit. I think I need to expand my use of verbs and adjectives away from the easy to grab ‘whisk’). The same helpful lady pointed out our stop to us (although to be fair, we actually knew where to get off, so-to-speak) and we thanked her profusely in a language she didn’t understand and went our separate ways.

We saw her again about 10 minutes later, as we had missed the turning to the castle and were happily wondering through the housing area of the little village. She pointed us back in the right direction, and call me fluent in Slovak, but I’m sure I heard her mumble under her breath ‘Stupid flipping tourists!’.

So, Devín Castle. We arrived just after 11am, and there were only one or two others there that early. The archaeologists and foundation responsible for renovating/excavating the site made a decision decades ago that they would preserve the site as a ruin, rather than falsely rebuilding a replica of the castle(s) that have stood on this spot for centuries. A wise and well considered choice. The ruins were dramatic and really sensitively preserved with discrete signposts describing the use of the buildings and what life might have been like for the inhabitants.

The castle sits right on the border of Austria (which also happens to be the river Danube). We both bizarrely got ‘Welcome to Austria’ texts while we were up on the walls looking out over the impressive (green) Danube. The views were stunning. The castle was beautiful, and worth the trip out from the town – which was neither long or expensive, so no excuse not to go.

Back in Bratislava, we committed a Cardinal sin – by eating in the Dubliner Irish pub. Those that know us, know that eating local is important to us while we are away. Food and drink being one of the ways in which you can easily immerse yourselves into another culture, and if I wanted to eat McDonald’s, I could do that at home. So, usually an Irish pub was the last place either of us would choose to go. However, it was getting late when we arrived back into town, it had started to rain again, and the Dubliner was still offering a locals daily menu (which we had) as well as being full of locals (and not tourists), well, at this time of day anyway. So, only a semi Cardinal sin rather than a full-blown Cardinal one perhaps?

The remainder of the afternoon was spent wandering the streets; following the little metal crowns embedded in the road which marked the way on the city walk. That was, while there was a road to follow – much renovation work being undertaken on the cobbled roads throughout the Old Town meant that finding the crowns to follow almost because part of the fun.

We decided that to head back to the KGB bar when there were plenty of other places to try for pre-dinner drinks would just be plain foolish – like the way we never just go to the same pizza, Chinese or pub when we are at home 😉 LP recommended a bar called Mojito, where it suggested you have a Mojito. LP said so, so we did. The cost of the cocktail was more than the daily lunch menu at the Dubliner. It being happy hour and all, we only paid for one – which was almost (but not quite) as much as two daily lunch menus at the Dubliner.

Beer here is amazingly cheap (to the tune of typically €0.70 for 0.3l or €1.00 for 0.5l) which is probably why Bratislava is the top new stag and hen weekend destination. It’s also amazingly good; loads of Slovak/Czech beers to choose from and all decent quality.

So, the end of our second day, and tomorrow it’s time to head home. The rain came back in the evening, and I’m trying really hard not to taint memories of our time in Slovakia by the poor weather – after all, it was my fault we booked here in October, so what do we expect!

PS. I’ve just spellchecked this entry, and am mildly amused by the fact that whilst a missing apostrophe is picked up from the word McDonald’s, Mojito isn’t listed. Was the programmer of the Blogger spellcheck a Fast Food junkie rather than a cocktail aficionado?