Bratislava

Bratislava (Slovakia) was perhaps the biggest pleasant surprise of our Danube River cruise. Bratislava: Sightseeing & Travel Guide open its "Prelude" with, "Bratislava was always an underdog overshadowed by Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, but ... it is just as beautiful and possibly even more interesting." As we were signing up for this river cruise, I have to admit wondering why we were going to Bratislava instead of spending an extra day in Vienna or Budapest. I'm really happy that this river cruise introduced Bratislava to me!

One of the benefits of an European river cruise is the proximity most of the river ports have to the "old town" sections of each city. Although Vienna's port had not been particularly close to its downtown and old town area, the Bratislava port is really close! The next two photographs show the Gate 1 cruise ship we were on in both photographs and shows how close we were docked to the "New Bridge" (Nový most). The first image shows how we would sometimes need to cross through a different river cruise ship to get to ours due to multiple ships docking at the same dock.

Bratislava's Old Town is charming and full of interesting sights. One of the most obvious architectural sites is St. Martin's Cathedral.

At this spot near St. Martin's Cathedral is a solemn memorial that is described as, "a Holocaust memorial on the former site of the Neologian synagogue remembers since 1996 the murdered Jews of the city as well as the overall 105,000 Jews from Slovakia who perished during the Holocaust."

From St. Martin's Cathedral, there is a cobblestone walkway down into the historical town center of Bratislava.

The next couple of photographs depict Michael's Gate in the rear and center of the photographs. Although we did not access it, the tower is said to provide great views of Bratislava.

The Old Town Hall is an interesting landmark on the outside of the Main Square (Hlavne Namestie) area.

The Old Town Hall offers a museum and a great place to look over Bratislava's old town center. Several portions of the stairway to the tower are spiral.

The views are well worth the stair climb!

In a city with several fountains in a small geographical area, Maximilian's Fountain (Roland's Fountain) is arguably the most famous.

The next photograph shows the Slovak National Theater (opera house).

Bratislava Castle may be the most obvious and well-known landmark in Bratislava.

Although we did not enter Bratislava Castle, the climb to it was worthwhile because of the spectacular views of the Danube River, of Bratislava, and of the "UFO Bridge" (New Bridge).

Here is the "New Bridge" or "UFO Bridge" from a different perspective. This photograph was taken from below Bratislava Castle at the entrance to the bridge.

The following photographs are of some interesting things in the shopping areas of Bratislava.

One of our favorite spots in Bratislava on the warm day that we were there was Hviezdoslav Square (Hviezdoslavovo námestie). We enjoyed the tree-lined walkways, fountains, and cafes and restaurants. We ate lunch at a restaurant here and had a sweet treat from Luculus Ice Saloon. (We also purchased local pastries at Obchod v Muzeu.)

Devin Castle is actually part of Bratislava, but I will cover our visit to Devin Castle in its own post.

Our first visit to Bratislava was a reminder of one of the advantages of a trip with an itinerary planned by others more familiar with the area. Had I planned the Danube River trip, I might have easily skipped Bratislava for additional time in the more well-known cities on the river, but it would have been a shame to miss a city as interesting as Bratislava when in that area of the world.

Vienna

After cruising from Melk, we arrived in Vienna (Austria) with plans to dock in a port outside of Vienna (Wien) for the evening. The docking port outside of Vienna was the furthest from the main city, by far, of any of the ports we stopped at on this river cruise. A bus took us into Vienna that evening for a concert and a bus tour of Vienna at night.

We attended the Vienna Residence Orchestra Mozart and Strauss Concert held in Palais Auersperg. The Vienna Residence Orchestra is a chamber orchestra with small number of ballet dancers and opera singers who participate in a subset of the performed pieces. They did an excellent job presenting pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Strauss within the elegant Palais Auersperg.

We really enjoyed the concert, but a nice unexpected addition was the bus driving around the Innere Stadt and Ringstrasse ("Vienna Ring Road") portions of Vienna at night. A guide described some of the key structures as we passed them and it was a nice opportunity to see them lit up at night.

Because of long-running drought conditions in that area and levels of the Danube River reaching dangerously low levels for the river cruise ships, it was decided that we'd cruise to Bratislava (Slovakia) dock there for the night. I wasn't terribly disappointed in this because the Vienna port was far enough away from Vienna to require more effort to get into Vienna on one's own from the ship. We would bus from Bratislava to Vienna the next morning for our full day in Vienna.

When we arrived in Vienna by bus this next morning, the bus driver drove the bus through the city to allow us to see several of the sightings we had seen the previous evening. Just as it was great to see the city lit up the evening before, it was now nice to see the impressive city at daytime. We saw again saw several of the major sightings along and inside of the Ringstrasse.

The bus dropped us off in Vienna at the Neptune Fountain near Albertina Museum. That was our starting point for a walking tour of that area of the city.

The public square Josefsplatz was crowded, but was worth visiting.

Although we did not view the Spanish Riding School, we were able to view some of the Lippizzan horses and their home at Stallburg.

Although we did not go inside, the exterior of the Hofburg Palace was as impressive as one would expect.

At the bottom of the photograph of Hofburg Palace shown immediately above, one can see a bit of the Roman ruins found in front of that palace. The next photograph shows them a little bit closer.

Our tour guide led us to Kärntner Straße next.

These photographs are of the Vienna Pestsäule (Plague Column).

St. Stephen's Cathedral (Stephansdom) is described in Vienna: Once an Imperial Capital, today a Major European City of Culture as, "Vienna's most recognizable landmark and Austria's finest Gothic edifice."

We elected to participate in the optional tour of Schönbrunn Palace.

After touring significant rooms inside of Schönbrunn Palace, we walked around portions of the exterior and gardens, though there was far more to see than we had time for. (We purchased a copy of Schönbrunn Palace: Guide to the palace for its photographs of the interior.)

Spending a single day in Vienna is not even close to long enough to see a significant subset of the city's attractions. However, to really see a lot more of Vienna would have required significantly more time as many of its attractions are museums, concerts, and other cultural offerings that can take quite a bit of time to enjoy.

Cruising Danube from Melk to Vienna

One of the things I liked about the river cruise is that we spent a lot of time in the European cities and towns along the Danube River instead of cruising on the boat as much as one often does on a sea cruise. Some fellow travelers told us they prefer sea cruises because you do get more "breaks" during cruise days. On the Danube River cruise, we typically did most of our cruising at night, but one of the rare exceptions was the day we cruised from Melk to Vienna during the middle of the day.

There were numerous towns and other interesting sights during this cruise from Melk to Vienna. One of the most striking was the view of Schloss Schönbühel.

There were several other impressive sites to view.

One of the most fascinating parts of the daytime cruising for me was seeing the river locks in action. Our ship and cabin were really close to the edge of the first lock we went through that morning. The next three photographs illustrate how close.

In the next lock we traversed that day, we were further from the wall and the following series of photographs depict our descending in the lock.

Although I typically was happy about the nature of the river cruise being more time in town and less time cruising, it was fun to spend a few hours on this day cruising the beautiful Danube River and seeing so many impressive views.