It was another rainy day today from start to finish. I had tentatively planned to do a 20 km bike ride around a part of the city I had yet to explore, while Michael had his Slovak language class with his tutor, but the roads were very wet with pooling water , and the rain moderately heavy, so I decided to stay in to pack and put Milan’‘s bike back to the way it was. Once Michael returned, I put the bike back into the luggage storage room and we took a tram to the town hall to visit the city museum.

When I first got here, I asked Michael about the umbrella street, something I had seen in his photos from previous trips, but when we went there, they hadn’t been set up.
Today, as we were walking to the museum, I saw that they had been set up, so, of course, I had to take a picture in the rain with my umbrella.

The city museum is in the Old Town Hall, which is a complex of buildings constructed in the 14th and 15th centuries. It is the oldest museum in Bratislava founded it in 1868. It offers an outdoor 360° lookout from the top of the tower.
Several of the exhibits were of a religious nature. This is the front and back of the top of a crosier, or bishop’s staff.


Some of the rooms in the tower had circular and oval windows.

The Old Town Square was as empty of tourists as we had seen in the two weeks we have been here.

There was an interesting display of the history of man’s taming of the Danube. The first image was what it looked like in 1712 and the second in 1929.


This is a view of the Old Square through the stained glass in the courtroom.


This is the ceiling of the court room.

There was a small chapel next to the court room.

There was a display of a couple bikes: a boneshaker, and a Pennyfarthing.

After finishing up the museum, and having lunch, we decided to have gelato at Michael’s favourite shop, but most of the gelato shops were closed, including his favorite, I guess due to the rain, but we did find this fancy new one open, and indulged.

The rain made for some lovely reflections with interesting distortion due to the cobblestones versus smooth pavement. This is the National Theatre at one end of Hviezdoslav Square.

Hviezdoslav Square was one of my favourite places in Bratislava. He was an author.

On one side of the Square in front of older buildings were glass boxes to house restaurants. They were quite delightful and made for interesting scenes.


This is another one of Bratislava’s statues. This one is Hans Christian Andersen.

A Jewish synagogue at this site was destroyed by the communists in 1969 to build a bridge across the Danube, a very controversial decision, and this sculpture, baskets of stones, and information boards tell the history.

This is St. Martin’s Cathedral, Bratislava‘s largest church.


This building was Bratislava‘s first department store and housed Tesco. It now has a food court and other small stores.



The building in the background is the now defunct hotel Kyjev. I have been puzzling over the design and wondering what the building looks like from the inside for the two weeks I’ve been here. It was only in researching for writing the blog that I discovered that this is actually a giant pice of street art.

We returned to the room for rest, then picked up dinner at Billa, a grocery store in the mall attached to the hotel, and then I finished packing.
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