A Day Trip to Bratislava: Exploring Slovakia’s Capital from Vienna, Austria

Here’s everything that we did on our day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia from Vienna, Austria. So we got ready and had breakfast at our hotel in Vienna and then at about 11:00am we headed over to the train station. We went from Wien Mitte station, which I’m pretty sure is the main station that you use to get to Bratislava. The ticket costs €18 and that also includes public transport usage once you’re there in Bratislava, and I feel like that’s pretty equivalent to UK train prices. The trains, however, were a lot nicer than UK trains. It was cleaner and more spacious and they were exactly on time. Journey took about an hour and a half and once we got there we had to take a 10 minute bus ride to the city centre. We spent our first half an hour or so just kind of walking around to get a feel for the city. And as you can see, we saw ST. Michael’s Gate. After a bit of walking around we were already quite hungry, so we headed over to this place that I saw on TikTok, just called Slow Back Pub. I had this kind of medieval looking interior and it had a really cool menu of traditional Slovak food, uh, but there wasn’t a lot of options that didn’t include red meat. So I got these beetroot and feta dumplings which were incredible, and my sister got schnitzel and I also got a glass of wine. For only €2 50, which is insane. After we finished lunch, we took the tram over to Bratislava Castle. The castle is so cool because it’s obviously at the top of a hill and it kind of imposes over the whole city. It’s really grand. Spent about half an hour just walking around the gardens of the castle and taking in the view, and then we decided to go into the museum in the castle. It was really cool to learn a little bit about Slovak history because I honestly didn’t really know anything at all. The coolest part about the museum for me was just how pretty everything was. I mean, the hallways were so grand and there was amazing views from pretty much everywhere in the museum. From the castle we took the tram to the famous blue church. I can see why everyone recommends going there. I have seen a lot of churches, but I’ve never seen one like this. It’s really unique and so pretty inside. I think we got there too late though, because we couldn’t go fully inside. We could just look in from the entrance, which was slightly disappointing. It was then already evening and we didn’t want to get back to Vienna too late, so we picked up some snacks as food is a lot cheaper here, and we headed back on the train to Vienna. All in all, if you’re in Vienna, I would definitely recommend taking a day trip to Bratislava. It’s really easy to get to, and as it’s such a small city, you definitely feel like one day is enough.