At the end of May, the UK has a second May Bank Holiday, which coincided perfectly with Daniel's birthday. We took a couple of extra annual leave days off to make the most of this opportunity to celebrate in style. We flew to Bratislava (courtesy of Ryan Air) and jumped straight on the bus to Vienna. We have to say that, sadly, Vienna was somewhat anti climatic after our romantic visions of baroque splendour a la Zagreb and Salzburg. That said, there was still some amazing parts of the city that we enjoyed visiting. The Hapsburg palace in the old town as well as visiting the Hundertwasse-Krawinehaus (think public toilets in Kawakawa, NZ). We also enjoyed hobnobbing in the famous Cafe Centrale with a beautiful slice of birthday cake.
From Vienna we travelled by bus to Budapest. This is an amazing city but do NOT by the Budapest City card - it is barely worth it, especially if you are only there a couple of days. It does not give free entry to many sites - only discounted entry. This down fall, though, was really the only blight on our time here. The weather was perfect, the buildings were amazing, and the night life buzzing. Our sojourn coincided with the Barosa Festival - lots of free open air music gigs and events for all ages so we enjoyed a couple of the bands as well as doing loads of people watching.
The next day we enjoyed the amazing views with our afternoon tea on Fishermen's Bastion (that is one big hill to get up on foot though!). The public transport in Budapest is very good and we managed to get around a lot - Heroes Square was interesting and another highlight was Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube river where locals and visitors alike go to hang out, work out, chill out etc. It was a shame to leave Budapest (especially the amazing accommodation - 35 Euro a night for a 1 bedroom self contained apartment in a VERY central location) but our holiday was fast coming to an end so, back to Bratislava.
We only had one night in Bratislava but we managed to make the most of our time there while still avoiding all the British Stag parties! We even got to see a ballet performance at the amazing new theatre (grand total cost of £4). The ballet was a modern children's folk tale, Popolar, all in Slovak but we got the gist of it. The food in Bratislava is also really nice - a highlight being the yummy hot chocolate and an ice cream parlour with Chili-Chocolate flavour! Dan also enjoyed a really yummy dish of snails! It was a great way to end the holiday and the journey back to London, while uneventful, came all too soon.
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