Bratislava

Today we arrived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. We had a full day ahead of us as the passengers finishing in Vienna were getting off here, and as the crew wanted to do a ‘deep clean’ of the boat, all the rest of us had to get off and go on tours as well. We were on the buses and gone by 8:45 am.  Our tour took us for a drive all through the City of Bratislava and up into the hills. Then we stopped at the Castle which sits overlooking the city and had a bit of a tour here. The locals call this Castle the’ upside down table” as it is a rectangle with a tower/turret on the 4 corners….understandable. Across the road from the Castle is the Parliament Building. This is a nice building which houses some 150 Politicians for the 5 million people whom live in this City. Overkill or what? From here we ventured into the busy centre of the city. After a walking tour where the special features were pointed out to us, we had some free time to explore by ourselves. Being a Sunday morning the many cafes were quite crowded with the locals all being somewhat amused and entertained by the many tourists I guess. We had a very nice lunch at a local restaurant, before boarding the bus to continue our tour.

We crossed the border and entered into Austria. Not a lot changed with regard to scenery here but there did seem to be lots of little villages along the way.  We were headed for Vienna but on the way, stopped in at the Schlosshof Palace for a couple of hours to tour the Palace and the ample grounds. This Palace is set on 50 hectares of land and is beautiful. The gardens are set out so nicely, they look like embroidered carpets. The inside of the Palace was grand of course, but the explanations of all the rooms took too long, so Dave and I left the group and did our own exploring. We actually saw more this way. We were entertained by a Stork who was re arranging his nest. The storks build their somewhat large nests on the top of poles or chimneys and the locals don’t discourage this as, of course, the Storks bring the babies. It did start to rain just as we were finishing our tour, so we were lucky with that.  As we continued our drive to Vienna we went through a couple of thunder storms and heavy rain, but this had stopped by the time we got to the boat, thankfully. The new passengers are on board and they do seem a little more ‘upmarket’ than the rest of us mere mortals on here… but, time will tell.

 Stork