Euro Adventure- Bratislava, Slovakia -Day 2

I would love to tell you that the day started with a roar.  But the truth of the matter is, it was 10:00am when we finally crawled out of our "nest" and started the day.  Chris has a client who is from Slovakia and she told us that we only really needed one day to see the city.  Since we had three booked and were exhausted we slept in. Once we got ourselves moving, we needed to make a trip to the bank which happen to be right next door to the hotel.  We were going to need some euros...

Chris had scanned the map and found out where there was a laundry that could wash a load of clothes for us or we could wash them ourselves and it happen to be one right around the corner from the hotel about a city block away.  We started out in that direction and it started to rain.....

So, we get there and of course there was a HUGE language barrier.  So much so that we resorted to "Charades" and drawings to get the message back and forth....hahahaha.  We were pointing to our legs and then pulling on our shirts, etc.  She was speaking in "Slovick" and we were speaking in English....hahaha.  It was clearly NOT working!
By now, all three of us are cracking up laughing.  At one point the poor lady put her hands over her face and shook her head....haha.  Then she " Ah!"  and she reaches for a piece of paper.  This is where Chris waxed artistic and drew a pair of pants....she said "ah"!  and then he drew a shirt (such as it was), and then she nodded her head yes! Next was the underwear.....she motioned NO WAY!  LOL.....

Then we asked if we went and got the pants and shirts, could she have them ready for us tomorrow.  "NO".  haha.  OOOOK.  Soooo, how about Wednesday......nope. Friday.  FRIDAY!?  We didn't even want them starched....haha.
  

Well, ok....how about we just skip this and buy an umbrella?  haha.  Ok  6.00 euro.

We got the umbrella.

ok, back to the clothes.  It was impossible for us to get the clothes back on Friday since we were to be in Prague, Czech Republic on that day.  We talked her into Thursday and she said there was no way.  Then she paused, motioned for us to be quiet and she went to the door and closed it.  We understood her (through Charades) that she would take the clothes to her own home and personally wash them for us and have them ready for us Thursday.

 She gave us her phone number and we told her what hotel we were staying at. After realizing that she had to work, we told her that we would come back and pick them up from her Thursday afternoon.  She was fine with that.  she had "drawn" the price for each piece of clothing earlier during our charades.  So, we knew what it was going to cost.  It was a fraction of what the hotel wanted to charge us!  We told we would be back in a few minutes with the clothes!  So, off we went back to the hotel to sort out the pants and t-shirts and take them back to her.

I couldn't help but notice how run down the city seemed to be.  It was very dirty and the people had a hopeless look in their eyes. Although Eva, our laundry lady seemed to be full of laughter...:-).

We made it back to the laundry with her clothes and got all of the pieces counted.  She started laughing again when she saw me taking her picture.  We offered her more money to do the clothes since she was going through such trouble, but she only wanted what she would have charged had she done them at her place of work.  The total cost 13.00 US dollars.  At the hotel, it would have been 6.75 per t-shirt (8 shirts in all) -$54.00, 2 sets of pj's -$16.00 each, 1 pair of jeans-$15.00 US.  total cost (without underwear) at the hotel would have been over $100.00 US!  We we VERY happy to pay her the $13.00....:-).

Well, you know by now we had certainly worked up an appetite having missed breakfast.  We caught a bus after purchasing some three day passes and found this restaurant.   I ordered a Pepsi which was the strangest tasting Pepsi I had ever tasted...ha.  The menu was mostly in Slovick and I was feeling adventurous!

We STILL have not figured out what I ate except the rice part and the greens that were on the plate, but it was delicious! I even shared a piece with Chris.....:-)

Chris had chicken and.......something....eggplant and.......??? haha.  He didn't like his! haha.  So, I felt sorry for the poor guy and gave him some of my mystery food and I ate his eggplant and....???

This is a shot of the restaurant which was almost deserted.

This is a frontal shot.....

Did I mention that it was in the basement?  I tell you that you cannot go ANYWHERE in Europe without having to climb stairs at one point or another...

We finished our lunch, and climbed the stairs back outside.  The resturaunt seemed to take up more space outside then it did inside.  This is ONE side of our bistro.

ok, time to start the day!  It's after lunch already... We waited for our subway surface car to take us to the historic part of town.

You could not miss the fact that the city was not well kept.  There seemed to be no street sanitation or care for how things were falling apart.  I was sad for the people as it usually indicates that the government has left the people behind.....:-(.

Of course once you reach the touristy areas of town (which was only about 2 miles away), it was a bit cleaner.

It reminded me of other European cities that I had visited in the past with the little hideaway places off the main streets.

This whole area was dotted with wood work shops of some sort or another....

For some reason this wooden carving had a Peruvian feel to it ........I think it was the hat....:-)

You can barely see it, but there is a restaurant hidden on the left side of the picture.....

We both wanted some coffee and refused to do the McDonald's thing after having come so far.  We saw this place and settled in for about an hour....

It is quite a nice place which prides itself on being "green".  The shops goes clear to the back which is hard to see from the street.

They even had ice cream.  But I didn't get any......

 Instead, we decided on this piece of cake that appeared to be mostly "cream"...ha. Oh my.  Well, we got the one piece and decided to share it instead of getting one each.  Glad we did.  It was quite rich and turned out to be coconut cream AND cream!

I find it to be the most unusual thing that when you are served coffee and you ask for an "Americano" they give you a small glass of water with it.  After tasting this coffee which she said she put milk in, I NEEDED the water! It was strong.  I believe it is actually expresso and they give "Westeners" water to help dilute it some...It was fine after I added some sugar.  But I ended up drinking the water instead of adding it to the coffee.

Cool buses running through the city center.  But I didn't see these nice ones a few blocks from here....

After finishing our snack, we made our way closer to the city center.  Along the way I decided to change my large umbrella for something smaller.  I took these pictures as an afterthought after returning to the hotel.

And this is it in its compact form, much easier to get through TSA on our return to the US.

Love the flags.  I should have them surrounding my house.....:-).  Helps with keeping a world view....

We passed a very old church that we peeked in and saw this.....:-).  I was glad they were not in service yet as I was not sure it was a "tourist" place or not.  Some are; some aren't. this one was not as it had locked, iron gates for either keeping people out or keeping them in once they got there...ha

We traveled on down the street noticing that the narrower streets reminded me a bit of Saltzburg, Austria only not nearly as beautiful.  And maybe a little like Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Scootard is steadily snapping pictures of the fountains and other things around him....enjoying the view...:-).

At one point, we came upon this poster.....I thought..."wow, his future ain't looking so bright!"....

We saw in the distance a building that drew our interest......

and as we made our way in that direction, life was going on with a news channel doing an interview. Chris wanted to get me to stick my head in and wave.  uh... no. lol.....
 


This is a closer look at the building that we were drawn to.....

 And a beautiful fountain with who seemed to be the same guy we saw in the last 3 countries we have been to slaying the same dragon.  This time it had three heads.....haha...  wow.  It must grow a head every time we see it!

 Loved this gate way....

No idea who this guy was, but he must have been important and undoubtedly dead by now....

This placard seems to be original from it creation.....

This is the town square......:-).  This really does have it's old charm preserved.  But sadly, it cannot be seen anywhere else in the city where we have been so far.  Hey!  I know that guy.....:-).

Although this building had obviously undergone some restoration, it had been in this very spot since 1558.

Some of the original placards had been preserved......

As we traveled on we came across some stalls where the merchants were selling their wares...
These were all made of straw....Now, where is that guy from OZ?

I turned my head for only a moment and Scootard was headed inside the church.  I was not sure if they were in service or not as time had passed since we had visited the last one..

It was very quiet and we wanted to be respectful.  So, this was the only shot I took before the service started and the priest arrived.  And THAT happened so quickly that we didn't have time to leave.  So, there we were.  Sitting in a Catholic Mass being spoken in the Slovick language, not understanding a word.  I was glad that I had had some understanding of the mass and didn't stick out like a sore thumb.  Well, at least not for that reason...ha.  But, it was clear to me that one of the young priest that came out with the older priest somehow KNEW that I didn't understand a word.

 He looked a me a few times and chuckled...haha.  After a couple of times of that, I looked at him and mouthed ..."what?!"...ha.  He put his head down and smiled and chuckled again...haha.  I leaned over and told Chris "he knows that I don't know what I'm doing"...hahaha.    I knew enough to know that if you are not baptized as a Catholic, they do not want to serve you communion.  I whispered to Chris that when the people began to line up to received communion, we needed to quietly slip out.  So, we did....:-).

We made our way back outside where I laughed about what had just happened.......:-).  Priceless....ha

There's that guy again!

The town square was busy with artist and musicians doing their thing.  This guy was a one man band playing something from the Beetles era.....:-)

Believe it or not, it was approaching dinner time by now.....This guy waved to us on our way......

This guy was hanging out in the sewers when we went buy........

And THIS guy decided that he wanted to have a chin wag with the guy hanging out in the sewer!

I don't know these folks, but somebody decided to make their acquaintance.

And it wasn't me!

We stopped here for dinner.....I would tell you the name if I could remember how to say it! 

The dinner crowd had not arrived yet......cool.

Since I had eaten that "mystery meat" at lunch, I decided to stick with what I knew for dinner. The menu was written in Slovak, German, English, and Italian..

Here's mine.....

And his turned out to be fried cheese.....ha.

We finished dinner and started for our subway surface car....This beautiful building was in view.  It is the Slovak theatre..

This is a shot looking from the entrance point of the theatre.....

And then we passed this building which happen to be the Slovak Philharmonic. I wished I had been able to attend an event there during our stay...:-(

This is the view of the building once we got past it.  It is massive and takes up a full city block.

Every culture has its heroes.  I figured these folks had to either be important or represent some important event in their history.  But I didn't see a placard....

We made it back to the hotel safe and sound and you know who began to "tune up" for his shower....you know how some folks like to make music in the rain.....:-)

I think he lost his tuning fork!......

Singing in the rain, just singing in the rain, what a glorious feeling.. I'm happy again!!

And so, my friends...here ends a wonderful, but short day.  Tomorrow we are looking forward to more adventure, more delightful food, and the pleasure of sharing it all with you!

See ya then!....:-)

Euro Adventure- Bratislava, Slovakia Day 1

Well, we woke up this morning in full anticipation of a great transition from Budapest to Slovakia.  I actually woke up two hours early, but mostly because the bed was so firm that I had to get out of it..  But since I was awake, I started packing the few odds and ends that were still sitting around.  When hubby woke up, we went down for breakfast thinking that we had to leave the hotel about 10:00am to make the train.
I was kinda glad we were leaving as I was beginning to get bored with the breakfast........
Scootard was happy though....I think food is one of his love languages.......:-)

The hotel told us to let them know when we needed a cab and they would call one for us......  But once we found out that check out wasn't until noon and it was only 8:30am, we opted to go back to bed after breakfast and try to get a nap before starting another adventure!

The plan was to have the taxi driver take us to the station where we made our morning walks to and we would get public transportation to the train station that would take us out of the country.  But when we asked the taxi driver how much it would cost to take us all the way to the train station, it was do-able.  We were on our way!

The city was having an annual marathon run and some of the traffic had been detoured.  I was glad that the driver didn't charge us more because we had to go a round-about way to get to the station.  But we got there in plenty of time to catch a 1:25PM train to Bratislava.......:-)

This would be my last glance of Budapest, Hungary as our luggage was being removed from the trunk.....:-(.

The cab driver bid us farewell and safe journey and we headed for the other side of the station with all of our lugggage.....

 A lady approached us and offered her assistance.  We told her that we needed a ticket to Bratislava and she had us follow her...She then went over to a machine and gave us a number.  I guess we had a bit of a wait in front of us.  It was about 12:40pm.  I was hopeful that we would be able to grab lunch before we set out on this near three hour journey into the next country.

I guess Scootard got bored because he started doing a little jig while standing in line waiting to be called ......

After about 20 minutes of waiting, we finally got our tickets and made our way to the restaurant for lunch.

Apparently, this diner has been around quite a long time and people used to be quite dressed up when they traveled and came in here to eat.

It took us a bit longer than I had like to get some service and I was keenly aware of the time passing us by.  We did look over the menu while we waited and made our selections.

Scootard ordered some kind of crepe thingee (but the Hungarians call it pancakes) in a red paprika sauce. I wasn't sure he was going to eat it at first.

I mistakenly ordered Cordon Blue, but meant to order Chicken Kiev.....:-(.  Oh well.....

After our meal, we had about 10 minutes to get to our train.  Thankfully it was on track 7 and we were standing by track 5.  The longest walk was to our car which was NOT in first class....ha

Once we got our trip underway, the countryside was beautiful and I felt like I wanted to skip through it.  Then I thought about all of that Cordon Blue I had just eaten and the thought quickly faded.....

I enjoyed the view, but was looking forward to making our arrival and getting some much needed rest....

Along the way, this castle like think presented it self to me on the hilltop.  I have no idea what it was....

most of the stations along the way were so tiny...and I was keenly aware of the need to learn yet another language in a very short period of time.

I managed to get a couple of shots down some of the village streets as we went flying past them.

The Danube River kept right on rolling along and would go on into other countries through Europe as well.

 We were coming up on another station and this one was painted pink! ha.  I thought of a friend of mine who loves pink....haha.  You know who you are! ha

Most of the housing along the way were old high rises with no frills or comeliness.  So, it was a bit of "eye-candy" to see something other than that when we passed these homes......

After a quick glance at my watch, I knew we had to be getting closer to our destination....the excitement was building....

The next thing you know ( after a bit of a snooze), we arrived in Bratislava, Slovakia eager to see what it was going to be like and very aware of the need to do laundry!  This shot is outside of the train station.  Our hotel is one city block away....Seemed like an eternity getting there.

We made it!  Over broken sidewalks and uneven walk ways, but we finally made it to our hotel in Slovakia...:-).  The lady at the front desk was quite helpful with information in regard to taxi's etc.

While Chris was getting us checked in I decided to take a few snap shots of the lobby and dining areas.

We were going to be on the first floor this time which was really the second floor...ha. The room is quite nice!  Wait til you see the bathroom!
 

And the cool thing  was that as soon as we closed the door behind us, the television came on all by itself with this on the screen.

 and now for the bathroom......look closely, what do you see on the far right side of the screen?  Keep in mind that I was standing IN the bathroom when I took the picture.......hahahaha

Ok, here it is from a straight on angle.  That is NOT a reflection!  The wall the separates the bathroom from the bedroom is glass.  That's right...glass!  There is a "modesty curtain" that can be pulled over it if you so choose.  Cool -eh?

When you come to hotels like these, you have to be careful of what you use in the room. The refrigerator can be expensive if you choose to even take a bottle of water.  One bottle of water can cost upward of $4.00 US.  And that's for a 16 0z size.  I don't know what that is in mls.
 

But wait!  There is good news to report.  Remember when we blew the transformers?  Well those were the things that would have helped us recharge my camera batteries.  But low and behold, my troubles are over!  There is a fancy, schmancy hair dryer thingee on the wall with a switch that will accommodate my battery charger!  And I had already blown through one of them......YAY!!  I plugged it in right away.  It was truly and sincerely dead....It has charged up just fine.  One down with one to go.
 

 After getting settled into the room, we went down for dinner and decided to stay in after that and get some rest.  Here is the dining room that is used for dinner each night.

Same room, different angle.....

And this is our table......:-).  A girl could get used to this stuff!

Chris ordered some Oxtail broth soup with beef and something green in it the looked like a burrito..I'm sure it wasn't.  but I had a taste and it was very good....

The bread that they served us had sunflower seeds (or something like it) and rye in it.  And what appears to be butter is butter and some kind of cheese to spread on it.  So, I did! It was excellent. I looked up at Chris and said, "there is a chef in the kitchen".  You can always tell the difference between a cook and a chef.  Or at least I can because I have a food service background.

But get this!  See the guy in the white jacket.....yeah, he's the chef in the kitchen!  They had a closed circuit television trained on the kitchen so that we could watch them prepare our meal.  I could not believe how easy these guys made it look....

It is quite an impressive kitchen too.  Looks to have a lot of bells and whistles.....:-).

 Chris's food came. He ordered a salad with chicken......

I seem to be on a Risotto kick for some reason.  But this had oysters, mushrooms, parmesean cheese, spinach and other spices.  Excellent! Chris did give me some of his chicken so that I could have the protein my body requires.

After dinner, I was too stuffed to eat desert..But you know who decided to go for broke.....:-).  After some time pasted after having had put in his order, he wondered what was taking so long.  I told him they are making your desert right now.  Go take a look......:-). He was describing what he saw and I was explaining what was actually happening....:-).

And after they were done, I said...ok, here it comes..........
.Now, that doesn't look like much but let me tell you.......Well, I'll let "him" tell you........

This is what I call "The Approach".........

"The contemplation".......

"The moment of truth"......

"The Ecstasy ".........

The Finale".......by the way, that brown bowl is made of chocolate....... and was filled with strawberry mousse and topped with fresh mint.  That had to be the BEST chocolate, I have EVER tasted.  We agreed that it had to be Swiss made.  IT WASN'T  HERSHEY! haha

I walked, and he danced back to the room......It has been a good start to another adventure!

See ya soon!!