Day 22 Bratislava, Slovakia. A Wonderful City!

Tony's View

I started this morning off by using a French Press for my coffee. It makes pretty good coffee. Fran, who rode with Wade and I on our cross country trip, brought his own French Press coffee maker on our 2010 trip. He insisted it was the only way to make coffee. Then after my wonderful cup of coffee, I had to go outside to clean the bicycle. Being that we are directly in town, as you can see in the picture, I had several people go by and look at me. 

We decided to head out this morning looking for this famous little guy coming out of a manhole cover. We found him and Joan rubbed his head for good luck. Hope it helps to get our bags to Budapest. We then went on a trolley tour. You can see from the picture that Joan took of me on the bus how much I like my picture taken on a bus. The first stop was of a memorial for when the Soviet Union set them free from the Nazis.

 The memorial is to the right and the picture to the left is a castle of the Hapsburgs. They ruled this area also for many centuries until WWI.

 Here is a picture of the outside of the trolley tour bus that we were on. The picture was taken by a guy that was raised in Kettering, Ohio and now is from Maryland. He is biking with a tour group from Vienna to Budapest.  The pictures below are of the castle entrance gate and up by the castle. 

 The picture to the left from the castle shows the Danube and way in the foreground their humongous industry park. The picture to the right is a view from the castle of that cool bridge with the restaurant on top. We were going to go to it, but it gets mixed reviews.





I had to get a picture of this building for obvious reasons. It is green. Actually, there are many green, blue and pink buildings. One area of town there are many residential units. Actually, if you look at the bridge picture you can see them in the background. The one tour guide we overheard, who wasn't ours, said that when the communists were in charge they built all these residential units for industry workers. They built them all in gray and when they were liberated from the Soviets, Slovakia painted them all the different colors.

 After the tour we headed out to find this blue church. It is called St. Elizabeth. I typed it into google maps and got directions. We ended up at St. Elizabeth's, but the wrong one. It still was a beautiful church and we were able start our rosary there. We stepped outside and this time I typed St. Elizabeth blue church. It was a 7 minute walk, and we were at another St. Elizabeth church only this time it was blue. It was blue on the outside and inside. Definitely distinguishable. After that we decided to go to another grocery store. This one was huge and was very reasonable in price. On the tour I heard that the area was famous for their Riesling Wine. Even the Habsbergs came here to drink Riesling so I had to get a bottle. 😋

Joan's Extras

Bratislava is a great mix of people from all over. Even though Slovak is the official language here, most speak English which makes it easy for us. We sat by a group from Tunisia on our tour who also spoke English. They said that their country is beautiful too. My bucket list just keeps expanding.

We ate at Urban House for dinner tonight. We loved the food and they even gave us free water. That's a first for this trip.

Being on the road for almost a month, we really have to think about what day it is. I know what today is though. It's Grandma Monday, and guess who is in my thoughts today?