Crowne Plaza Hotel Bratislava

... to figure out where we should be. We had no guide book or GPS to help us (the map stopped at the border) so we were really roughing it.<br><br>Finally, we somehow managed to find and navigate our way to an underground parking garage. We noticed a sketchy guy check out all our belongings in the trunk of the car while we were getting organized, so after leaving my parents in a bank we went back down to check on the car (only minutes ...

... hard hat! There was a music festival on with a permanent stage set up in one of the town squares - we stood and watched an American band play for a while. Slovakia seemed like quite a cool place nothing like how it was depicted in the movie Hostel - even so we kept a lookout for electric drills. Unfortunately due to our train ticket time constraints we have to push on north up to Poland tomorrow or we'll never reach Paris so it was a flying Slovakian visit.

... would see them there. One interesting thing I had never thought about, though, was the fact that they couldn't tell if we were American or British. It never occured to me that to some people in the world, English is just English and the accent is too sublte to really be able to tell. I suppose it makes sense; I mean, I wouldn't be able to tell if someone was from Budapest or Prague and they're speaking different languages, nevermind ...

... yourself. To wit: "The well without water. Although the bottom of the well is below the surface of the Danube the well diggers were stopped by a 320cm thick granite slab(!)". Deconsructing this, a well without water is, at its most basic, a hole. And its the fourth ranked sight. I was initially a little aloof and non-judgmental when departing hostel people said Bratislava was best seen getting of the morning train and getting on the evening one. But as we sit on ...

... way from the station to the hostel earlier. We paid our 28p bus fair and went. The shopping centre was one of the nicest i've ever seen and the bowling alley was the nicest. We didnt do much after that and went back to the hostel and played some competative uno in the bar and went to bed. Day 13 We woke up at 10.30 checked out at 11, left our bags in the hostel and went to see the sights. We walked through the ...

... There is to be no ice hockey! Couldn't believe it. Devastated. Movie it is. Gee what haven't we seen. Well... the theater almost directly across from the hostel is showing really old stuff and only at night, so that's out. We ended up north of town at Polus City Center. They have two things to see that a) I haven't seen and b) aren't dubbed. Today we saw the new Bond - Casino Royale. It was good, some things were a bit drawn out and could ...

Today was another driving day. We left Hungary at 730 and were off to Vienna. The borders were all very easy. We made a lunch stop for a few hours in Bratislava along the way. It was pretty cool but a kind of small place for a capital city. We went up to the Bratislava Castle which was nice, and had a great view down over the city. We saw ...

... the Danube. When I got back to town, I went to a wine bar to sample some Slovakian wine (not bad, actually). There were only three people in the place - the owner, the bartender and a friend of theirs in commercial real estate. I know this because they invited me to sit with them, they poured me a bunch of different Slovak wines, we has some kielbasa, and discussed whether Bratislava was ready for an Argentinan steakhouse. I then went across the alley to another bar ...