We set off on the next leg of our journey – from Vienna to Bratislava – on a coach with really good wifi, so I could catch up with my friends and fam back home. The journey was beautiful and peaceful, and we saw so many swallows on the way.

When we got to Hostel Blues, we were greeted by such a helpful guy – he recommended so many awesome places to us, and gave us a little list of local foods to try.

After dropping off our bags, we headed out for some lunch at Slovak Pub, where I had a traditional Slovakian meal of potato dumplings – which had a similar texture to gnocchi – and spicy sausage. It was really nice, but I recommend going for a half portion if you can.

When our bellies were full, we wandered around up and down the beautiful cobbled streets of Bratislava. We totally fell in love with the old town, and decided it looked like somewhere out of a storybook – it’s just so cute.

Up the hill to the castle (which wasn’t so interesting – just a big white box basically) but the views across the river to the concrete jungle, contrasting with the red roofs of the old town were great. Back down the hill, to a bar called Le Senk for craft beers – very yummy.

We explored a bit more, and found the Church of St. Elisabeth, which you might know it as Blue Church, because both the exterior and interior are pastel blue – it looks a bit like it might just be a giant cake.

In contrast to such a pretty building, we headed north to look at a couple of Bratislava’s communist structures, which made my eyes feel sad because they were so ugly.

The guy at the hostel tipped us off about a vegan food festival called Vegan Feast, so we went there for dinner. They were playing amazing music and there were loads of young, cool-looking people there having fun times. We didn’t really know what any of the food was, but whatever we ate was really yummy.

We headed back into old town to a bar called Kontakt, which was also really cool, and we tried a local Bratislavian spirit called Borovicka (which supposedly tastes like gin, but I didn’t think it did). Then we watched a bit of the Slovakian folk festival, and headed back to the hostel, as there were some people around that put me on edge, especially as one of our friends had something stolen when he was there.

Bratislava truly exceeded our expectations, and I would recommend it to everyone. It is quite small though, so it’s probably not worth staying longer than one or two nights.

My highlights of Bratislava

• story-book-worthy cobbled streets
• helpful & friendly hostel staff
• alternative feel

What I’d do differently if I visited Bratislava again

• stay for one more night
• explore more of Slovakia

This trip was part of a 2 week adventure through Eastern Europe. We also visited Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Plitvice Lakes National Park, and the Croatian coast – click the links to read those blog posts 🙂