An early start on Friday morning, flying out from Leeds Bradford to Bratislava. Quite a few budget airlines head to Bratislava rather than Vienna, as they aren’t a huge distance apart and Slovakia is generally much cheaper than Austria.
All the photos in this post were taken with my phone camera, so apologies for the lack of quality in places (although compared to phones from a couple of years back, they are a clear leap forward – long live computational photography).
The view was pretty stunning en route:
We landed around 09:30, and got the hotel taxi from the airport. Since it was so early, we weren’t able to check in, so we left our luggage, had a coffee and some biscuits in the reception area, then headed out to explore the city. It’s not massive (around 500,000 people), but it’s Slovakia’s capital so has plenty to see and do.
Walking around the old town, there were numerous cafes, churches and other points of interest, including a sign showing the place of birth of former world wrestling champion David Unreich, which was quite unexpected, until I read more about him and his wartime experiences. He and his friend Imrich Lichtenfeld (founder of the Krav Maga martial art) organised a militia to resist the Nazis in 1938, before Unreich fled to the US. Tragically a lot of his family were murdered in Auschwitz towards the end of the war.
On a lighter note, wandering further out of the centre of the old town leads to a bridge over a busy road, with views to one of the more modern landmarks of the city: the UFO on the bridge:
Apparently it’s possible to get a lift up one of the UFO’s legs to an observation deck, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible within the limited time available (and an attack of claustrophobia even thinking about the lift).
Architecturally, I’d say Bratislava was a unique blend of Soviet era concrete, baroque era grandeur, gothic churches, rough-around-the-edges urban, and modern high-tech glass and metal.
Underpass 
Saint Martin’s Cathedral 
Funky building 
National Opera
Sight-seeing makes for hunger, so the next step was to find an interesting place to eat. There are plenty of restaurants around, but we fancied trying somewhere properly Slovakian, so did a quick check on TripAdvisor then headed to Koliba Kamzik, which promised to deliver some authentic scran.
We had a beef broth soup to start, which was excellent (if a bit cooler than expected), containing small chunks of beef, root vegetables and some noodles.
The main courses we went for looked like they’d be typical fare… I can’t remember exactly what was in them, but it involved gnocci, fried onions and some pinkish-looking meat (well, mine did anyway). I’m probably better-off not knowing. Actually, I’ve just found it on their online menu: “Potato dumplings filled with smoked meat, served on stewed cabbage with fried bacon and onion”. It was very tasty, for sure.
The other main was “Home-made “bryndza” (soft sheep cheese) filled dumplings, served with sour cream, fried bacon and chives”, which I seem to remember was alright, though I preferred mine.
Meat-filled dumplings 
Cheese-filled dumplings