Llama hats in Bratislava

I had been to Bratislava airport; I had flown to Dublin from there.  I had seen only a few sites of this city from behind the windows of a bus.  I wanted to walk these streets and soak up some of the ancient history of this city.

So, it was in December, Imelda and I were keen to go somewhere different and given that Bratislava Letivsko is not an adequate representation or reflection of the city, we decided that we ought to visit Austria's close neighbour; a short bus journey away.

Other contenders included Krems but I'd seen a little of that town before.

The trip to Bratislava was discussed and called off many times within a short space of time.  We were still discussing the prospect on Friday night in Barcode.

After much deliberation we decided we would go the following morning and set our alarms for the not so early time of 0900 hours.

We got to the ticket office and the agent promptly slammed the window closed.  He had started his lunch break.  We missed the bus we had hoped to take and so we wandered around Südtiroler Platz, searching for a little cafe to pass the time.  We found one and sat down for a quick beverage and biscuit.

We thoroughly enjoyed our little sit whilst taking a variety of photographs to document our delay.
We boarded the bus and began our adventure.

We rolled out and travelled on soaking up the Austrian towns and countryside, occasionally dipping into our confectionery supplies.  Soon, we had crossed the Slovakian border and were eager to dip our senses into the thrills of this often overlooked city.

Our first stumbling block was getting to the city centre.  We bravely and boldly followed the crowd onto a bus and immediately panicked that we did not have a ticket, nor did we know how to obtain one.  We kept our heads down and maintained a vigilant watch but our conscience succumbed to the barrage of sweaty pellets of guilt bleeding from every pore and we hopped off at the Economic University where we gathered our thoughts.

We studied the map and bought a 90 minute ticket.  We took another bus and travelled to a shopping centre before finally hopping on a tram to the centre of the city.

The Christmas market was buzzing.  We were both very hungry; biscuit and chica morada only taking the human body so far.  We found a restaurant and ate our fill.

We decided it was time to explore the city.  We started with the market.  We wandered around, sampling the stalls and indulging in some local mulled wine.  We caught the end of a talent show and wandered some more.  We surmounted the stairs to Bratislava castle and walked to the President's residence.  On and on we went until we realised we were somewhat lost.  In the dark we groped for familiarity.  Eventually we asked for directions and within a short space of time we were satisfied that we knew where we had to go.

We weren't sure when the last bus left for Vienna that day so we opted for the 20:15 bus.
We popped by the cake stand at Schottentor and bought some Waffeln.  We agreed that anything other than a movie that night would be over exertion.