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Sunny Surprise
Bratislava, Slovakia
Our expectations of what Bratislava would look like we're completely wrong. We were expecting it to be quite grim, cold and dismal, with the locals looking as miserable as sin but instead we were met with glorious sunshine and happy, smiling faces. We got off the plane and within 5 minutes we had passed through passport control, rescued our suitcase off the baggage claim carousel and were sat in the back of our swanky taxi on our way to our hotel. We arrived at Hotel Marrol's looking a bit worse for wear (due to James's attraction to flights at ridiculous o'clock) and were greeted with a welcome drink. I opted for a glass of water, not wanting to look like a raging alcoholic whilst James naturally accepted a glass of beer. We arrived before the normal check in time so we had to wait for our room to be spruced up. Half an hour later we were on our way to our room (305 if you're wondering) when we managed to get trapped in the lift not realising we needed our keycard to use it. Our room came with a complimentary minibar so we cracked open some drinks and settled in. After freshening up we went to explore town and we were seriously unprepared for the weather! We had packed clothes thinking we'd be getting the same dreary April weather from old Blighty and we ended up with 30℃ heat and blistering sunshine. We headed to one of the shopping centres to find some practical clothing and headed back to the hotel for some respite from the sun. After a nap and some quality 80s love ballads we ventured out in search of beer and food. Beer Palace was recommended on Trip Advisor and it certainly didn't disappoint, the crispy chicken wings were the best I've ever had and James had the 'Slovak special' (deep fried cheese with a mountain of chips) The beer was unpasteurised which I'm told is quite important so I've been asked to mention that. The music was a mixture of new and old rock and we new this would be a regular place when good old Bon Jovi came on as a sort of theme tune when our food came out. Several beers later we made our way back for an early night.
Day two and being more prepared for the weather we were able to explore most of what Bratislava had to offer. We made our way to the old town centre and came across the Palace of Primates, which disappointingly despite its name, doesn't house royal monkeys and apes but rather famous tapestries. As we were absolutely roasting after navigating the streets of the old town we went back to the square for a well earned iced coffee. We found some places for future reference and strolled down to the front and took a detour across the Novy Most bridge and up to the top of the UFO tower, so called because it looks like a great big UFO in the sky. The view was well worth the admission price and we spent at least half an hour just watching everything going on. We decided to walk through the Jan Kral park to get to the Aupark shopping centre (where we saw the cutest French Bulldog in H&M walking round with no lead and a ball in its mouth) and got some food for a picnic back in the park.
In the park we saw 3 men practicing sword fighting, 2 grown men riding child size scooters, 1 man pushing a pram at about 30mph on rollerblades and 1 couple of huge proportions, the man topless and filming the woman while in her bra, picking flowers and making herself a flower crown. She then got on all fours and in a number of poses. Further on there was a group of hippys doing Thai Chi, a man punching air practicing some kind of martial art and a man walking a self made tightrope between two trees. On our way back to the hotel we sorted out the tram system to get to the train station for a day trip to Vienna. We are trying somewhere different for tea but deep down I'm craving some crispy wings.
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