Carl's Travel Blog: Ostrava & Bratislava

I finally will try and get my blog caught up with the second half of my inter-semester break. In doing so I am also going to abandon my traditional chronological style and have two posts, non-ball post & ball post, this will be the former.

After I moved on from Krakow I took a train down to Ostrava in the Czech Republic last Thursday in order to pay Pavla and her family a visit. Pavla and Pavel's daughter Ellen is now almost three years old and is getting quite big! She chatters away in Czech all the time and wonders why Uncle (me) does not speak Czech as well! Most of my visit was spent catching up with Pavla more than actually doing things and gave me some time to relax as well. I must admit I am guilty of forgetting to take pictures so I did not get any new pictures of Ellen (sorry!). On Saturday morning I took a train down to Vienna to attend the ball and engage in my final travels.

So now fast-forward through the rest of saturday and the wee hours of the morning on Sunday and you will get to my final expedition of my break Bratislava, Slovakia. As I have previously explored Vienna during my backpacking trip a year and a half ago I decided I did not want to spend more time in Vienna on Sunday so I looked for alternative day trips and decided on Bratislava.

Bratislava turned out to be a really neat capital with an excellent assortment of sights to see. The old town included many different old traditional buildings such as theaters, old government buildings, towers, gates, and many others. Also in old town is St. Martin's National Cathedral where many past kings and queens have been crowned. Most impressive though was Bratislava Castle sitting on a high hill looming over the city. Not too surprisingly the castle was my favorite part of the town. In all Bratislava proved to be an excellent and doable day trip from Vienna before I got on the Bus at 9:00 pm before the 10 hour overnight bus ride back to Vienna (not a pleasant way to spend the night...I am looking forward to a real bed tonight!). I will leave you with some of my pictures from my trip to Bratislava.