Waiting for laundry
Yesterday was kind of a leisurely day for us as we slowed the pace to adjust to the heat wave. Bratislava is a charming town, but we didn’t feel pressured by a big checklist of sights so we started the day with one key goal: Do laundry.
Slovakian colors
Laundromats have been frustratingly hard to find throughout Eastern Europe. They barely seem to exist, and those that do really fly beneath the radar of the Internet. But here in Bratislava I found a laundromat with a good web page — with English! — though it was a bit of a hike outside the center of town.
Overlooking the town from Bratislava Castle
No way we were going to do a marathon walk in the heat wave, so I decided to go online and master the local mass transit system, which I generally have a knack for. There was a lot of info, but it was really hard to piece together exactly which combo of things to do. So we set out and tried to just make it work. After some initial frustration just finding the local stop we were soon on a tram, then connecting to a bus, then walking the last few blocks to our suburban laundromat. The system was pretty impressive for a hot Sunday morning. Strangely, I find doing laundry in exotic laundromats kind of fun. It’s just an adventure.
In the afternoon we wandered slowly around a couple key sites of Bratislava, including Bratislava Castle and St. Martin’s Cathedral. Under the Austro-Hungarian empire, this city was known as Pressburg and served as the capital of Hungary after the Turks overran Budapest in 1526. Empress Maria Theresa and 10 other monarchs were crowned as Kings of Hungary in lovely St. Martin’s.
This morning we’ll pack up and catch a 3-hour train to Budapest, a city I visited just last year with my dad and truly loved.
Stunning architectural details, including the steeple of St. Martin’s Cathedral
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