"Bratislava" a Bratislava Travel Page by kph100

At the end of November 2005 I went with 12 work colleagues for a 3 day/2 night trip to Bratislava, Slovakia.

We arrived mid morning after a flight from Stansted with Ryan air at about a cost of 30 pound each, return. Not bad huh ...

Upon arriving at the airport we enquired with tourist information about getting the bus tickets but the lady stated you would need to buy something from the cafe in order to get change for the ticket machine.
She suggested a taxi would be better.

This is what we did and within 15 minutes we were right on the banks of the Danube at our accomodation, yep thats right we were staying on a boat....... a 4 * boat that is - the Botel Marina.

They allowed us to drop our bags prior to booking in and we all went off to see the city. A ten minute walk and we were right in the old town.

During the next 3 days we saw all the old town, St Johns Cathedral, St Michaels gate, Christmas market in the town square, The Archbishops Palace, Bratislava Castle, The Davis Cup (Tennis), been up the Novy Most ( New bridge) to the observation tower and bar, Aupark shopping centre, Castle museum (well some of us, the rest recovering from night before).

My overall impression of Bratislava is that of a city very slowly recovering from its Communist past. On the taxi ride from the airport you could be in any communist city, it reminded me of a previous trip to the outskirts of Budapest.
3 days is more than enough to see everything in the city and the nightlife was fairly slow, but that may of been the time of year and midweek.

The hotel was great value and we all had a great time experiencing a city none of us had been to before. probably the greatest surprise to us was the fact english was so widly spoken and a lot of notices etc all in english.