bratislava.

V.

Dobrý deň, everyone! :) As you might know, my bf and I spent the past three days in Bratislava, Slovakia. Unfortunately it was raining heavily on both Monday and Tuesday, wherefore I was only able to take pictures inside coffee houses, our hotel or other places where the waterdrops couldn't reach my camera! 

Our journey began at Vienna Hauptbahnhof where we took an one-hour train ride to Bratislava main train station hlavná stanica. Shortly after we had arrived, we were greeted by an enormous amount of rain that made it very hard for us to find the right bus straigthaway. As soon as we had gotten on it though it only took us five minutes to reach our hotel, which, by the way, was really nice! It's the Falkensteiner Hotel at the bus station Zochova and can be recommended to everyone going to Bratislava! :) 

After the rain had decreased a little bit, we decided to hit the streets of Bratislava. 

Since we were pretty much soaked after only 30 minutes of walking, we entered this lovely little coffee house and restaurant called Moods, which offers different varieties of sandwiches, cakes and also warm food.

 (Btw.- this was one of the best apple pies I've tasted in my entire life!) 

After our break we headed back to our hotel and on the way we found this amazing store/café called Urban Space. You can buy books there, as well as DVDs, designer items or simply enjoy a cup of cocoa while listening to nice music. 

In the late evening we once again dared to go outside to get a bite to eat in the restaurant El Gaucho, an argentinian steakhouse that serves delicious food! :)

 Since the rain was once again quite unbearable, we took a taxi home to our hotel.

The next day I woke up to an enormous cramp in my back, that was a result to my reluctancy to let go of my camera for one second of our city trip. I guess, me holding the camera in the worst possible, most clenched posture for 24 hours (due to the rain) wasn't exactly benefiting for my spinal-area. Shortly after breakfast the pain got better though and we decided to pay a visit to one of Bratislava's most famous spots - the Bratislava castle. As you might have guessed though, the RAIN once again, wasn't our friend, so we climbed up the steep castle hill, tormented by heavy winds, rain (I use the word rain a lot, don't I?) and in my case back pain. At one part we simply started laughing out of sheer despair, after the wind had wrecked the third umbrella we took with us, my eye make-up resembled the look of a racoon and we both stepped into huge puddles of water and almost slipped. Seriously, we couldn't stop laughing for a moment.

After looking into the soaked and helpless faces of other tourists, trying to get pictures of the Danube, we decided to slide down that hill again, get ourselves a taxi driver and do the one productive thing you can do, when trapped in a foreign city. Shop.

At the shopping mall Aupark you can find a huge variety of fashion stores, both international and national, as well as lovely little cafés and restaurants.We went right for some comfort food, so we found ourselves in the restaurant KUBU, situated in the middle of the mall.

The food was very tasty and the ambience is (for a restaurant in a mall) quite nice! :) However, as you can see up there, Mike was devastated that we couldn't take a proper look at the city of Bratislava and so was the little baby turtle we got to meet in the pet shop next to the restaurant. But oh, look how cute!!!

Since my back pain got even worse in the shopping mall, we took a taxi back to the hotel where we spent the rest of the evening in our rooms, - me in the bathtub to be exact,- hoping that the pain will go away. The next day, our date of departure, we couldn't believe our eyes! SUNSHINE! SUN! SHINE! Unbelievable! I seriously haven't been as excited to see the sun for a long time, so after breakfast we checked out of ours rooms and immediately and FINALLY explored the streets of Bratislava. We got to see the Old Town, the market stands, parks, the Danube and were even witnesses to a filming team producing some sort of documentary in front of the National Theatre!

Even though we couldn't explore most of the beauty Bratislava has to offer, we still enjoyed our stay (back pain drama and heavy rainstorms aside)! :)