Category: Via Slovakia

Day 6 (11th July, 2018)

We woke up in the rainy Budapest. We were lucky with the weather. Yesterday was hot and sunny when we were exploring the city, today was rainy, but it didn’t matter, we were going to spend the most of day in a car anyway. Before leaving Budapest I had a date with my dear friend and my ”namesake” another Piia. First we had a breakfast in a place called 3 Pajamas. Breakfast Club, which I can highly recommend. Nice and cozy little breakfast cafe with the friendly staff was just around the corner of our hotel. It was all we needed in the mornings … a big portion of good coffee to get the engine running again.

Day 6 agenda was to have a quick lunch at 11:15 am. with Piia at her work place in IBM Budapest and then hit the road again towards Prague. I had managed to find my way with the help of my phone’s navigator so far, but today I drove totally to the wrong direction. In the end we found ourselves somewhere in the suburb of Budapest. The address was supposed to be Neumann János utca 1, but somehow I missed the first part ”Neumann” and there are quite a many streets called János utcas in Hungary. So we ended up to have a nice little tour in the suburbs of Budapest until we found our way to IBM office.

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Day 6 we were on the road again driving from Budapest to Prague approx. 540 km. When we were planning our route, we first decided to visit Vienna, which was along the way. But you cannot just ”visit” Vienna, you need to stay a couple of days in that beautiful city. So we decided to skip it and have a short visit in Bratislava the capital of Slovakia instead, which is situated very near the border of Austria. We drove up to the hill to see the beautiful castle  of ”Bratislavsky hrad” and took some pictures of the views of Bratislava and Danube river.

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Day 4 (9th July, 2018)

Day 4 – Our target was to drive from Krakow, Poland to Budapest, Hungary. Because the distance is only 400 km, we decided to stay in Krakow a bit longer. We left from the hotel around 10 am. and wanted to have a breakfast in the old town of Krakow. The old town, known as ”Stare Miasto” in Polish, is one of the UNESO’s world heritage sites. The architecture is very unique and beautiful, it has features from both renaissance and baroque periods. The buildings have a long history and the town itself has been under the foreign rule several times. There are lots of interesting sights and tourist attractions around the area. We had reserved only two nights and one entire day to spend in Krakow, which definately was not enough. I’m certainly going to visit this beautiful historical town again.

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After the breakfast we had a short visit to Oscar Schindler’s Enamel Factory ”Fabryka Emalia Oskara Schindlera” which is located just a few kilometers to south-east from the old town of Krakow. We did’t enter to the museum, because the tickets were ”sold out”. So, next time we better buy our tickets online in advance. If you have read the book of Schindler’s list or seen the movie, you might remember person called Izaak Stern. He was the accountant for Schindler’s Enamel Factory and one of Oscar Schindlers trusted man. In the movie the role of Izaak Stern was played by Ben Kingsley.

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We also had a plan to visit ”Wieliczka” Salt Mine, but when we got there, it was already 1 pm. and the line in front of the ticket sale was very long, so we decided to skip our visit there. You should reserve 3 hours at least for the guided tour in Salt Mine of Krakow.

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In the afternoon we were on the road again, driving from Krakow, Poland to Budapest, Hungary. If you look at the map above, you probably don’t notice that there is a thin grey line, the borders of Slovakia. So, our target was to drive through Slovakia to the next country, Hungary. Unfortunately we didn’t have time and plans to stay in Slovakia over night, although the country is very beautiful and there are definitely a lot to see and explor. The landscape is very green and on the way you can admire the mountain range of High Tatras. We also passed the town of Zakopane, which is located very south of Poland, near the Slovak border. On the way we had to stop and just admire the views, which were magnificent.

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In the other hand it was very good we couldn’t stay in Slovakia longer than just a couple of hours, we would have bought too many pairs of shoes from the local ”CityMarket”.

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