Last spring i visited Bratislava for the second time and i must say i really enjoyed it! That's the thing about living in Vienna. You get to visit many European capitals that close to each other. It takes only one hour to get there. We took the bus and it leaves you directly in the old town. What i love about Bratislava´s streets is that they`re cute, with flowers everywhere.
And because there are many people who haven´t been in this city, i´ll write down some tipps on how do you get there from Vienna ;)
You have 3 different direct connections between both cities. It takes approximately 70 mintes to get from one to another.
By bus: There are more bus operators providing direct connection between Bratislava and Vienna, but the main ones are:
- Slovak Lines Express http://www.eurolines.sk/fileadmin/user_upload/cestovne_poriadky/mal/wien_new.pdf
- Blaguss http://www.blaguss.sk/pages/en/home.php (also called Flixbus: https://www.flixbus.com/
- Eurolines (also called Postbus http://www.postbus.at/de/)
Slovak Lines offers more flexibility. Blaguss (Flixbus) is faster and very customer friendly, has wireless the whole trip and even an app!
The ÖBB-Postbus ticket costs 14,30 a round trip for adults, but for one euro more you can use the whole city transport network for the entire day in Bratislava. They're not very fast, because they don't only use the highway, but sometimes they offer you some goodies, a bottle of water and sweets ;)
By train: It also takes around an hour with the ÖBB train from the main train station Hauptbahnhof.
By boat: we went by boat the first time, it was funny, there were a group of elderly people with us :) By boat is more expensive, but it´s worth the try. You can take the Twin City Liner (http://www.twincityliner.com/) or the hydrofoil vessel (http://tragfluegelboot.at/)
So, trip details aside, what can you do in the city? It is pretty small, so you can see almost everything in one day. I´ll recommend to spend the whole weekend and book a nice hotel in the old city centre.
If you take the bus, it´ll leave you near to the city centre. I´d get lost on the cobblestone streets, no map, no nothing. This is the thing about Bratislava, no tourist stress of what to see first.
- There is a little souvenir market in front of the city hall. We played a game that @_pommegranate invented. If you are there with friends, family or with your boyfriend/girlfriend is actually fun. We had like 5 to 10 minutes to pick a souvenir for the person we were supposed to (we made 4 named peaces of paper, we then picked by chance). The souvenir had to cost 5 euros or less. I got a handmade leather bracelet from my sister, i still wear it ;)
- Another activity could be to go up to the old town hall to take panorama pictures. The ticket also includes a little museum visit.
- The castle, oh the castle, all pretty and fortified on the hill about the old town.
- The blue church, is another place to visit and it´s still on my list, because i didn´t manage to visit it. I spent way too much time in cafés. Yes, i´m that kind of tourist :D And because i love coffee places so much, i´ll write another post only about them.
For people who live in Vienna, Bratislava can be a much needed weekend break. For those who don´t live that close, i´ll recommend a package trip. You could include Vienna, Bratislava and Prague. I have seen most of the tourists do it, so i´m planning on trying it for myself and then post a detailed week tour with of all these beautiful neighbor capitals. Stay tuned ;)
love, i
