Dreaming of a White Christmas - Day 5
Exploring Bratislava
Another day, another dock.
We arrived in Bratislava in the early hours of the morning
and after breakfast prepared to go out and explore the city. Due to the early
hour, nothing was going to be open, so when we were offered a half price city
tour (a peace offering for the fact that all the information would be delivered
in German), we took it – at least we would see the city!
The tour picked us up at 9am on a cute little red train that
drove around the city streets. Our tour guide Katarina provided occasional
snippets of information in English, but generally we were left in the dark.
The first stop was the castle on top of the hill where the
icy wind froze our faces and rapidly numbed our camera fingers. There were some
spectacular views over the city however and the building was impressive, even
if we failed to understand any of the provided information. We will have to
consult Google to fill in the data gaps.
After this, we travelled down the hill past the Presidential
Palace and into the old city where we left our train and were taken into a very
old café for a drink of honey wine and a bread dough appetiser – interesting
and quite tasty.
Our tour continued as a walking tour after this, past the
oldest church, Franciscan, and into the ornate chapel of the Primate’s Palace
where we were treated to a Christmas concert. The string trio consisted of a
violin, viola and double bass. The violin player both played and sang
simultaneously – quite an achievement I thought. The music was a range of traditional
and local Christmas songs; performing Silent Night in both German and English
and singing a rousing Slovakian gypsy carol to finish the recital.
The forecourt of the Palace contained a ‘forest’ of
Christmas trees which we were told were decorated by local school children.
These would be judged, and the winning school would receive prize money.
We moved on through the cobbled city streets to the local
Christmas Market where we had some free time to wander before returning to the
ship for lunch, during which, we departed Bratislava and began retracing our
route back in the direction of Linz and ultimately, our starting point in
Engelhartszell over the next two days.
The afternoon was a leisurely one, enjoying the passing
scenery while sitting in the comfort of the lounge. Some joined in a lively
game of Bingo, while others of us battled the wifi to upload blogs and
photographs. After dinner, we all retired to our cabins, the lounge area being
packed full of people and way too hot!
We seem to have upset the excursions expert, as some of the feedback we have provided to our travel agent re the issues we have been having with language and food, have obviously filtered back to him from above, so now he is not happy with the ‘Australians’. The Bratislava tour guide was also heard to be reporting to him about the ‘Australians’, but we have no idea what she said.
Oops!
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