A farewell to camping.

We might not use the tent again for a while, so we made sure it was clean and dry before rolling it up.

It is only about 30 km to Bratislava but we could feel our legs and the path surface was poor yesterday, so we factored in plenty of time.

Our triumphal entry into Slovakia (the sign is on the high level gantry).

It was a bit of a struggle through the busy traffic and then the cobblestones of the old town of Bratislava.

But eventually we made it to our posh hotel (booked that morning at a discount). There is no campsite in Bratislava (honest) so this was our first night in a hotel. Tefel the tandem was locked up safely in the cellar. Room number:

The first thing we both did? Had a long shower. The second thing we noticed is that we hadn’t seen any telly for a month and we hadn’t missed it. Thirdly, we realised that we hadn’t eaten anything that day – no breakfast or anything else. So then we went out for a veggie burger.

We are both happy being in a Slavic-speaking country. The Germans and Austrians who we have met have been very patient and also appreciative of our efforts to speak German. They haven’t automatically switched to English at the first sign of trouble.

Nonetheless, Slovakian and Czech are the Slavic languages closest to Slovenian. We are looking forward to seeing if we can use our Slovene. We can read many of the signs.

As I am writing this I am watching a competition of youth orchestras in the centre of town in the evening.

We had planned to take a ferry back from Bratislava to Vienna on Saturday but belatedly discovered that we could not take all our luggage on the boat. So we’ll need to figure out something tomorrow. Maybe the train. Or we could cycle back! Or else our friend has kindly offered to pick us up.