We stopped in Bratislava for about 2 hours, first looking at an old castle and then exploring the old town. This area of town was beautiful, filled with cobbled (uneven) streets, wide open squares, cafes and no cars! We stopped at a couple of Saturday morning markets.
In Bratislava we saw (maybe) the worlds smallest in width house. It is only 1.75 meters wide! I also enjoyed seeing all the old town walls and original gateways from the medieval era.
We had brunch in one of the squares and I tried a Bratislavan poppy seed pastry. We also had Austrian "Sisi" cake, which we had not had a chance to try in Vienna. It is named after a Viennese emperor's wife. It is moist and filled with flavored creamy icing - mmm.
We then moved on to Hungary, with no border control. After about an hour we had to stop again to give our driver a 45min regulation break. (Also we had a new driver from Vienna to Budapest, as our tour driver had a mandatory 45 hour no driving period. He has joined us here now). We stopped at a McDonalds - it had free wifi. We also had no Hungarian forint (currency) so had to spend use our €100 note and received Hungarian forint in change. I couldn't figure out how much we were due at the time but I'm pretty sure we were ripped off.
We then had another hour drive to get to Budapest. All up a short trip today. However, when we arrived we had a bus tour of the sights. This was great but the police had cordoned off the central city and we couldn't see one sight. We then found out we also couldn't get to our hostel. Our driver drove around for what seemed like an hour, and only managed to get us within 15 mins walk of our hostel. This was a bad walk, in 40 degree heat with all our suitcases etc. Lucky Stef and I packed quite light.
After a quick change of clothes we went to explore. We came across St Stephen's basilica which we will probably climb to the top of tomorrow. We then came across the reason why the police had cordoned off the area. It is Budapest's annual gay pride parade today. There were hundreds of riot police blocking of the streets as well as big fences up. As the parade went past, many people on our side of the fence were chanting in hungarian. They were dressed in all black and did not seem happy with the parade. We saw the riot police run in in a group a couple of times, but all in all the police looked like they were well prepared and had it under control.
For dinner we visited a very popular Hungarian restaurant. Stef had beef goulash and I had chicken and mushroom. We both had giant beers. Our tour guide is from Budapest so she has been very excited to bring us here. After dinner she took us to a very cool bar near our hostel. It was very underground/alternative exactly as you would imagine a bar to be in Hungary.
Tomorrow we are exploring Budapest, first stop the house of terror museum, all about hungary's past.
The photos are:
Gay pride parade
Protesters?
Church in Bratislava
We are rich in Hungary!
Goulash and beer for dinner
Square in Bratislava
Our bus trip - Vienna to Bratislava
Our bus trip - Bratislava to Budapest
View of Budapest and the Danube river
St Stephens Basilica in Budapest
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