Good sleep last night, hopefully my cold is on the way out. Feet are not swollen, better news still.

Breakfast in the hotel, €20 taxi ride to Vienna Hauptbahhof, platform 11 A-B.

*Tip for travellers – the train ride  Vienna to Bratislava has no booked seats, it’s a turkey shoot getting a seat, f…wits putting bags on seats then a heap of people left standing. If you are travelling and have big bags, like us, I’d find another way to get to Bratislava, if it’s possible and reasonable or maybe bypass it and go straight to Budapest. Or do a daytrip from Vienna by bus. 3 of us got disabled seats, The Mechanic ended up standing, with nowhere to store bags. Luckily it’s only 1 1/2 hours but with travelling bags it makes it hard. The train is packed and picks up more passengers at stops on the way to Bratislava.

Comment on Vienna – Prague is a rumpled bed with sheets that need a wash, Vienna is crispy clean linen, Barcelona is a colourful bedspread and clean old sheets. But they all have humans and dogs pissing on walls and streets and vomit and bits of dogshit on the footpath. Bratislava is like grandmas spare room when she says Uncle Blue slept in the bed last year, but I think the sheets are ok.

The women in Prague, in our area at least had a fair proportion of supermodel types ( long legs, short leather shorts or skirts), in Viennna not so much of that but, from my observation a lot of younger and middle aged  Mercedes and Audi driving types had enhance lips. Just an observation, no data to back that up.

*Another  Tip – if your phone takes an eSim then the Orange €39.90 for 28 days phone and 70gb of data is great. 2 weeks in and I’ve only used 4mb of data. And my Aussie sim is still in the phone, so all I’ll do when I land in Sydney is change it back to Telstra in settings. So handy with having Google maps on tap and being able to contact hotels, travelling companions, calls back home to Australia, texts. It’s cheap and very handy. Aeralo is one for Asia.

Our trainstop in Bratuslava is not the main Hvlini station so we get an Uber the hotel. There is confusion over our tickets to Budapest tomorrow so we have to go to Hvlini to sort it out. We want guaranteed seats for the trip after today’s cluster f… trip. After being dismissed by all the windows saying ” complex ” information, we find an English speaker, she’s very helpful, our seat would have been half price and guaranteed seats if we booked at the Main Hvlini station when we arrived, but who’s to know these things  maybe we should have investigated more vigorously before we left. She lightens our wallet €8 but we now have seats on the 10.05am train. This area is quite tricky with language and trains, and mostly unhelpful people. Get it clear before you leave Australia if you’re travelling on trains in this area.

Our hotel – Elizabeth Old Town” is in a slightly grungy part of town about 15 minutes walk from the night area of “old ” Bratislava, a bit old Communist era grey, semi slummy area. There is a clear good tourist area and a not so flash area  we’re in the latter.

Our room is small, but functional. It’s a quaint old place with quirky rooms and hot water thats luke warm.

We walk the old town checking off our self guided walking tour list. We walk the modern UFO Bridge and leave some of Tim’s ashes in the Danube in Bratislava. We’ve left his ashes before in Prague ( the Vlatava) in in Vienna in the Danube. In 8 days time he would have been celebrating his 40th birthday.

A late lunch early dinner with drinks at the Dubliner Pub in the tourist area then a walk back to the hotel.

Dobrú noc z Bratislavy

Pauolo

St Elizabeth’s Church just around the corner from our hotel