Our visit to Slovakia was a part of our journey from the UAE to the Czech Republic. Since we were near the end and had a deadline for when to return (we wanted to surprise my sister during her event in Stupno), we only spent a night and a half-day in the capital city of Bratislava.

We spent the whole previous day in Vienna and arrived in Bratislava around/after midnight. We arrived a wee bit later than we planned since the border crossing we wanted to take was closed. We had a previously picked-out place where we could park and sleep in the car. It is not technically allowed to sleep in your car on the side of the road, but we picked a small side road leading to an equestrian area and no one bothered us during the few hours we spent there.

Bratislava

After waking up, we headed towards the downtown and parked Rambo at the nearby mall on the other side of the river Dunaj (Danube). Free open outside parking (Rambo was too tall for an underground parking lot), toilets, coffee, and walking distance from downtown…exactly what we needed.

The weather wasn’t great and our time was limited but we still walked around downtown, checked out the Christmas market, saw the Presidential Palace, and finished by walking up to the Bratislava Castle. Around that time it started snowing and we headed back to our car with a quick stop at the St. Martin’s Cathedral.

We were on our way soon after 12 pm. We had one more place to stop before going back home to Stupno and that was to take a little detour to Pustejov to visit my grandma and my mom’s side of the family.

We didn’t have a chance to see anything outside of Bratislava or go for a hike, but Vysoké Tatry are definitely on our list.