Three Capital Trip - Vienna (Austria), Budapest (Hungary), Bratislava (Slovakia) Posted on: 26th November 2016 :: Photo Credits: Prayaag, Pabitra, Alap, Hitkarsh ::
Continued from: Day 2: Budapest (Hungary)
Day : 3
Location : Bratislava
We arrived in Bratislava around 1 PM straight from Budapest. Bratislava, the capital and largest city of Slovakia, occupies both the banks of River Danube similar to Budapest. We had around 6 hours to explore the city. Our guided tour began from the Slovenské Národné Divadlo (Slovak National Theatre).
The tour guide was a young (and beautiful!) Slovak girl, who was also a history graduate student. She was very enthusiastic and friendly. We walked with her towards the city centre while she explained the historical background of each tourist spot. Along the way, there was a statue of the famous Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. His stories were a huge part of my childhood-reading-endeavours. My parents had gifted me the entire set of his fairy-tale books on my 10th birthday and I had read those books over and over for the next 7-8 years. All those beautiful memories came back to me after seeing his statue. The next famous statue along the way was 'Čumil' (man-at-work). This statue was surrounded by tourists clicking pictures with it and we also managed to get a few clicks.
In this part of the town, the streets had crown marks on them indicating the coronation route. A coronation festival is organized every year next to the St. Martin Minster, which we visited next.
St. Martin's Cathedral, the sacral symbol of Bratislava, has a wonderful tower with a gilded copy of the crown that was once borne by the kings of the Kingdom of Hungary.
Our guided tour ended at the Blue church, a Hungarian Secessionist Catholic church located in the eastern part of the Old Town.
It was already past 5 PM and we had been instructed to return to our bus before 6 PM. We quickly had some food at Ashoka Indian Restaurant and started walking towards the Slovak National Museum (where the tour had started). But after reaching there, we found that the bus was not there. We frantically called the tour-guide (he had warned to leave back those who didn't come on time). Fortunately, many others also hadn't come back, and the tour-operators had decided to wait for another 15 mins at a nearby location. So, we were able to board the bus back to Aachen.
This 3 days-3 capitals trip was very refreshing. As expected, Budapest was the best one among the 3 capitals!