Our first true day in Bratislava was actually and thankfully pretty uneventful! We spent the day touring the downtown and old town areas with Jan. He is a very good tour guide - both patient and detailed.
He has kindly provided us with a stack of bus tickets to utilize while we are staying here. He has also provided us with a spare set of house keys as he is leaving tomorrow.
Bratislava is a beautiful city - it is not big - but it thinks and acts like a big city. Loaded with culture and cultural events - you can see that it’s history and future is firmly rooted in the arts.
Since it is so close to Vienna - Bratislava sports a very strong tourist trade - with Europeans looking to take advantage of the strong currency exchange. Jan points this out at a mall he takes us to where most of the visitors are foreigners capitalizing on some of the great deals they have to offer.
The architecture in Bratislava is simply amazing - a nice mixture of old and new - with beautiful churches set to the backdrop of gleaming buildings - truly a very metropolitan city. One that everyone is obviously very proud of as it is so clean and free of litter or graffiti. There is some - no doubt - but there always seems to be someone working on picking up the trash or cleaning off the markings.
Our day tomorrow starts early - our first train trip across Europe to Salzburg! Jan is kind enough to arrange a taxi to the station (we don’t want to take a chance on the buses just yet - we have a tight schedule tomorrow) - so by 9:00 PM - we are pretty much out like lights - with a wake up scheduled for 4:30 AM! Europe by rail awaits!!
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