Why you NEED to visit Bratislava | Europe’s Most Underrated City!

Good morning, welcome to Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. I woke up about 5am this morning so that I could come up to the castle to watch the sunrise. Unfortunately all of the castle grounds don't open up until about 8am, so I'm going to head down to the old town and explore further from there. So into the old town I headed. It was so quiet as I walked through the streets, probably because most people were still asleep, but that meant that I could enjoy the streets all to myself. As I was walking towards the centre, I stumbled across this little statue climbing out of the sewer. This statue is known as Trumul, or The Watcher. This statue appeared along with a few others in 1997, a couple of years after independence was achieved. But interestingly, there is no real story behind the statue. Some claim that he is a legendary cleaner of Bratislava's underground, while others say that he is trying to get a cheeky look up some girls' skirts. A little further on was the main square, which houses a lovely fountain known as the Roland Fountain, as well as the Old Town Hall. The Old Town Hall was built in 1599, and today it also doubles up as a museum about the history of the city, and I'll be going around this museum later in the day. The buildings around the square come in a range of colours and sizes, and there is also a small church just next to the Town Hall. As a lot of things were still closed due to my ridiculously early start, I headed out to see the Presidential Palace, which is where the President of Slovakia has resided since 1996. The real name of the palace is the Grasilkovic Palace. Just behind the palace is a large open park called Freedom Square. There's a large fountain at the centre, and plenty of areas to take a seat. The next location required a bit of a climb to get to, so I set off up the many steps and eventually arrived at my destination. So I've just climbed up an absolute mountain. It felt like to get up to this wall memorial monument, but it was worth the view. It's called Slavin. There's plenty of little statues around, so I'm going to go take a closer look at all of those. The little features around this area were quite nice, but I've been hiding the main highlights. This 64 metre tall monument is the reason I climbed up all of those steps. The monument, known as Slavin, was unveiled in 1960, and is dedicated to Soviet soldiers who died during the Second World War in western Slovakia. There are thousands of buried military soldiers and graves around this area as well. It's all downhill from here, geographically speaking, thankfully. So it's 23 degrees, so I really don't want to be going up anything else in this kind of temperature. It's going to hit 31 today, which will be a bit ridiculous. I had to travel a bit out of the city for my next location, which was Hraddevin. I used public transport to get out there, which was super easy to use, especially with the IDS BK app, which shows you all of the routes and lets you buy tickets on it too. So I've just made it to Hraddevin, which is the castle. It's about 30 minutes on the bus from Bratislava, so I'm going to have a good explore around now. When I arrived, I bought a ticket to enter for €8, which was very good value for the amount of time that I spent there. Hraddevin occupies a strategically important spot in Slovakia. The castle overlooks the Danube River and the border between Slovakia and Austria. The fort has been present here since the 9th century, and the upper part of the castle was built in the 13th century. In 1809, most of the castle was destroyed by Napoleon's troops. The castle sits on a cliff with an elevation of 212 metres. There is a section where you can go inside and look around an exhibition that showcases some of the history of the castle. It feels like you're exploring in a cave as you do so. This place is definitely worth coming. I only paid about €8 to come into this, and there's so much to explore. I've only done half of it so far, but I'm having a really good time. There are loads of great viewpoints around the castle ruins, my favourite being on the scenic balcony overlooking the river Danube. So I've finished exploring the main castle now. There's lots to see, lots of little exhibitions and hidden rooms, but there's a little bit more to go see because there's an extended circuit which takes around 20 minutes according to the signs, so I'm going to have a look around there and see what else I can find. Just around from the entrance to the castle is the Gate of Freedom Memorial, which is dedicated to those who lost their lives trying to escape Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1989. I headed back to the city centre to go and look around the grounds of Bratislava Castle, which is free to do so, but you can also pay to go inside if you'd like to learn more about the history of the castle. There are a few interesting statues around the castle grounds, as well as an immaculate garden to the rear. This castle also boasts some great panoramic views over Bratislava, but the best panoramic view, however, has to be over at the UFO Observation Tower that is just across the river from the castle. So I'm just heading over to the UFO Tower now. It's quite a nice little underpass under the main road to it. I'm not entirely sure how you get up the tower. I don't know if I need to use some magic, but I'll find out when I get there. At an impressive 95 metres high, you can go up for €11.90, which is a bit steep in my opinion, but the views do make up for it. Just make sure to spend a decent amount of time taking in the 360 degree views. Back across the river is St Martin's Cathedral, which is one of the oldest churches in Bratislava, and construction was completed in 1452. It is free to go inside, and there is a possibility of going into the catacombs, however this seemed to be closed whilst I was taking a look around. Michael's Gate was next on the list for me to see. After buying a ticket for €6 at the pharmacy just behind, I headed up to get another incredible view over the city. This was one of four gates that was used as entry points into the heavily fortified city back in medieval times. The gate was built around the year 1300, and there is an exhibition inside to look at whilst you were climbing the many floors to the top. Once at the top, you can look all the way around and spot landmarks like the UFO Tower and the Bratislava Castle. The final attraction I wanted to look around was the Old Town Hall Museum, which costs €8 to enter. Like I mentioned earlier, this museum is dedicated to the history of the city. There are plenty of rooms to look through, and you could easily spend a couple of hours if you want to see everything. There is a lovely picturesque balcony that you can walk along that is located just above the courtyard where you enter the museum. You can climb the tower to the top for yet another viewpoint over the city, but this time focusing in more around the central square of Old Town. It was quite nice to go up all these viewpoints and spot the other viewpoints that you'd previously been up. At the end of the museum, there is also a creepy dungeon-like section that was very strange to explore around alone. So if you've seen my Belgium series, you'll know that I quite like to get the national kit for the country when I visit it, so that's my next task is to go and find that. I found myself a fan store near the centre of the city, and was lucky to find the shirt that I was looking for. So a football shirt's been acquired, I went for the blue one which I but it did look a bit more Slovakian, so that seemed like the right choice to go for. Now I think the next task is finding myself some food for the evening. I went to a place called Beabout that was near to where I was staying, and got myself a lovely burger which tasted amazing and wasn't too pricey. So that's an end to the day for me in Bratislava, hope you've enjoyed watching this as much as I've enjoyed exploring the city. If you have enjoyed it, please do like and subscribe, it does help a lot, and I'll catch you in another city soon. Overall, I would say that this is a city worth checking out, but you definitely don't need a long time, so a couple of days is plenty in my opinion, just make sure to avoid Mondays as everything is closed.