Bratislava, Vienna, and Prague

Bratislava, Slovakia

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia and is between Vienna and Budapest on the Danube. We knew nothing about it before coming but figured it would be a quiet city off the tourist trail – and it was. We spent two nights there in a new apartment just outside of the Old Town. On arrival we did our usual – got unpacked and settled in, a quick grocery shop, and then played some soccer with the boys.

In the morning we did a tour of the Old Town, grabbed some coffees, and then lunch at a place called Factory Pub. I had been doing a bit of research on Slovakian food, and to be honest, I found none of it appealing. Perhaps this was partly due to the food poisoning in Budapest. Our waitress suggested three typical dishes for us to split and we were all pleasantly surprised. We washed it down with a couple of mugs of delicious Pilsner Urquell – I swear it tasted better from the source. I also noticed that the bartender did a vigorous cleaning job on the mugs which led to a very clean, crisp taste.

After lunch we continued walking through the quaint cobbled-stone streets towards Bratislava Castle. We climbed the hill and made our way into the castle. The castle had four floors and was in the shape of a square with a large courtyard in the middle. The floors contained different exhibits – one floor with several religious sculptures and paintings, another floor describing the history of Slovakia and several historical documents relating to the countries border definition process, and another floor with several cabinets full of old porcelain dishes. I didn’t quite understand the relation between all the exhibits and, frankly, would have liked to have had some history on the castle itself, but it was interesting nonetheless (except the porcelain – that was just plain boring). Satisfied with having completed our touristic duties, we made our way back to the apartment.

Vienna, Austria

The next morning, we made our way to Vienna by train. Now this was sort of interesting. We had a booking issue with Booking.com. We had accidently booked three nights in Vienna for the wrong nights (two nights overlapped with the nights in Bratislava). We immediately identified the error after having received the confirmation and tried to request free cancellation (the booking was non-refundable). Since it was within minutes of booking, we were hoping for some leniency, but not the case. We went back and forth with both Booking.com and the property but we weren’t getting anywhere. Finally, I saw that the booking had been cancelled by the property, but we weren’t refunded any money. I called the property and explained that we would of course still use the third night since we had paid for it and were going to be in Vienna. We agreed that he would try to sell the booking, and if he was unable to, that we could still use the place for the final night. I checked in with the property again by text and hadn’t heard from them, so I told them that we were on our way to the apartment. We were on the streetcar, three minutes from the property, when I get a text from them telling me that they had already booked out the property. We showed up to their office anyways just to make sure that they would refund the booking. I’m convinced that they thought we were bluffing and that they were hoping to just pocket the money for the last night since they weren’t expecting us to show up. In the end we contacted our AirBnB and we were fortunate to be able to take it a night early.

Upon arriving to Vienna, we purchased a 3-day transit pass which would turn out to be great since we used it a lot during our stay. Vienna’s transit system is very good, and it is easy to get everywhere in the city. In the afternoon of the arrival day, we made our way into the heart of Vienna to St. Stephens Cathedral. We checked out the church and then climbed the 343 steps of the South Tower to take in beautiful views of the city. The narrow stone steps spiraled upwards, making the ascent dizzying and claustrophobic.

The next day we made our way to the Belvedere Palace– a beautiful old building that was the home to a museum/art gallery known primarily for its paintings from Gustav Klimt (notably “the Kiss”). There is an Upper and Lower building, however we only visited the Upper which was perfect. It was three floors and covered a broad range of art styles. Security was tight. At one point, I was looking at a painting and pointing towards something on it to show the kids (my finger was more than a foot away) when a guard approached me:

Guard: “Don’t touch the paintings.”

Me: “I didn’t touch it.”

Guard: “Don’t touch the paintings.”

Me: “Yeah, thanks. I know. I didn’t touch it.”

The kids found it interesting for about two of the three floors before we had to speed things up a bit. Afterwards we made our way back to the city centre to the Opera House for a 3:30 tour. Before entering we grabbed a quick hotdog lunch at one of the famous “Wiener Vürstels”. Yum. We toured the Vienna Opera House along with a group of people learning all about its history and checking out the various rooms and seating areas. Like many buildings in the area, it suffered the wrath of the nazis in WWII.

The following day we visited the Schönbrunn Palace. This was the main summer residence of the Habsburg ruling family for several generations. (Summer residence?! Seriously?). The palace was massive. We started out with the tour of the palace which came with an audio guide. We followed the guide through about fifty different rooms learning all about the history of the family. Despite all the power and wealth, it really was not an enviable lifestyle. The family would have as many kids as possible and marry the kids off to wealthy families throughout Europe, all for political reasons. This strategy of marrying their kids to other families allowed them to maintain and expand their empire without having to wage war. After walking through the interior, we carried on outside walking the expansive grounds. Beautifully kept gardens with endless pathways zigzagging throughout, one could easily spend a full day without walking the same path twice. We made our next stop to the mazes. There were three different mazes with perfectly manicured hedges of different heights. The first one was straightforward, but the second one which looked to be designed for kids (shorter height of hedge) proved to be more challenging. At one point it was actually a little frustrating because we were unable to find our way out for a while, but eventually found the exit. Next, we made our way up a big hill to the “Gloriette” – this was a building on top of the hill housing a café and an observation deck. We hesitated to make the trek up, but the entrance fee was included in our ticket, so we were going to get our money’s worth! The building itself was nothing too special, but the views were worth the hike. To finish off the tour we checked out the Orangery (literally an orange garden) and the private garden. The whole tour took about 3.5 hours, and we worked up quite the appetite so off we went in search of some schnitzel. Mel found an amazing and authentic Schnitzel house (Schnitzelwirt). There were some tourists, but it appeared to be mostly locals. After a short wait in line (this place was popular!) we sat down and enjoyed very large portions of wiener schnitzel. Yum.

Prague, Czechia

In the morning we boarded a train to make our way about 4.5 hours north to Prague. Our Airbnb was situated in a huge old apartment near the Museum, just outside of the Old Town. This ended up working well as we were very close to the metro, grocery store, and a little park where Liam could play soccer every day. The first thing I noticed about Prague was the amount of beer drinking. People just sit in parks, alone or with friends, and drink tall boys. We arrived on a Sunday, so there was more public drunkenness than there might have been on a weekday. Unfortunately, the weather forecast was not looking too good. Low teens and rain. On our first full day it was raining so we decided to take a well-needed break from the tourist activities. We spent the better part of the day planning upcoming travel and getting caught up on a few other things while the kids did some schoolwork. It is hard to do a “nothing” day, but we need to remind ourselves that doing so is important to avoid travel burnout.

After a good rest day, we were ready to hit the town. We spend the better part of the day just walking the streets and looking at the old architecture. We visited the famous Astronomical Clock in the main square. The clock dates back to the 1400’s and can simultaneously tell the time, the months, and position of the sun and moon.

Every hour there is a little show where a skeleton figure rings a bell, and the twelve apostles rotate on a carousel within the tower appearing through a window that opens. There was a hoard of tourists in attendance to watch the show. The whole thing was definitely a little hokey. We booked a guided tour of the clock tower and adjoining buildings. I found the most interesting part to be the old jail that was located in the basement and comprised a series of connected basements from five former homes. We were told that the Old Town of Prague had been filled in by 4 to 5 metres over the years such that the first floors of buildings became basements. Afterwards we grabbed a lunch of typical Czech food and then made our way back to the apartment.

In the morning we walked down to the river and over to the funicular to go to the top to Petřín Hill. We climbed up the Petřín Tower, which was built to resemble the Eiffel Tower, but much smaller of course. As we wound our way up the tower, we started to feel a slight fear of height creep in. Since much of the stairwell was open to the elements you could feel the wind blowing hard. The top of the tower provided great views over the city of Prague. As we stood there, you could feel the gentle sway of the tower. It wasn’t moving much (about an inch of lateral movement), but still, it was a bit unnerving. After the tower we went to an old building that was converted into a mirror maze and a house of mirrors. We made our way through the maze trying not to run into the mirrors and then spent some time taking silly photos of our contorted reflections.

We continued down the path towards Prague Castle. Within the castle walls stood the magnificent St. Vitus Cathedral. This massive church was built in the 1300’s and has one tower that reaches a height of over 100 metres. The walls of the church were adorned with beautiful, elaborate stained-glass windows. We continued touring around the castle grounds and walked down to the famous Charles Bridge – a medieval stone arch bridge built in the 1300’s.

In the evening we capped our last night off in Prague with a night out on the town. We had dinner at a traditional Czech restaurant (Hostinec U Sadlu). The boar goulash was fantastic. Afterwards we walked to the theatre to take in a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It was a very intimate performance with a string section of about ten musicians. Mel and I really enjoyed the hour-long performance; however, I think the kids were happy for it to wrap up!

Next stop – Deutschland!