Curt and the other professors took their students for a trip to Bratislava last week, so he was our tour guide today on our family day trip. We weren’t sure if we were going to make the trip due to rain in the forecast, but decided we probably wouldn’t get another chance during this trip. The bus ride to Bratislava only takes about an hour from Vienna and the fare is very affordable. Our first stop was the castle, of course! Practically the whole thing has been reconstructed and you can only visit a limited section of the inside that is being used a museum, so we only viewed it from the outside. We got some misty views of the river and Austria from the castle area. On a clear day you are supposed to be able to see Hungary as well, but I am guessing that we missed out on this.

Equestrian statue of King Svätopluk I

Castle well

Castle courtyard

The “UFO Bridge” is in the background.

We had lunch at one of the outdoor restaurants along the city streets. Dining outdoors is one thing that I absolutely love about Europe! It is so nice to sit and enjoy a nice breeze and take in the sights of the city while eating. Since it was raining a tad bit today it was a little chilly and Griffin and I fought over shared a blanket. Shortly after our lunch we met up with Curt’s brother and strolled around the rest of the city.

One of the things that Curt learned on his previous tour of Bratislava is that several people that neither lived in nor worked in the city have been memorialized here. It appears that any celebrity that visited the city has a statue or plaque denoting the event. One of the odd things we saw on our visit was a giant rock that had a piece of metal protruding from it and was engraved with the word Korzo. We had no idea what this meant, so I researched to find out that Korzo represents the meeting point that every Czechoslovakian town used to have for its young men and women in the 1950s and 60s. The Korzo rock in Bratislava is located at the midpoint of the area that was used for this purpose.

I’ll do whatever it takes to keep from being cold, haha!

Street with old city gate

Old city gate

Hans Christian Anderson got a hold of Griffin!

Hans asked me to pull his finger.

Theatre

Man at Work statue, AKA The Watcher…said to symbolize a dispassionate communist era worker.

We all thought this one was creepy, so G decided to threaten him with his axe.

Old Town Hall

The Jesuit church was a protestant church originally so it has a plain exterior.

There was as service in progress, so we didn’t explore or take more photos.

Old city gate

St. Martin’s Cathedral

We weren’t able to take pictures inside, but it was very pretty!

Out of all the sights in the city, one of the things that we were most captivated by was some cute little kittens that we spotted below while crossing a bridge. There were 3 of these little ones playing in the grass and bushes and we had great fun watching them and supplying the soundtrack to their follies. Aren’t they cute?!?

We made it back to Vienna in time to eat dinner and rest for about an hour before heading to the airport to meet my mother and nephew. Traveling between the city and the airport takes a while during the night hours, so it was around 11:30 before we had them settled into their hotel room and could head back to our place for the night. I know they were tired after their long flight!