Bratislava 2 – Day 6

I decided to have a less active day today and didn’t set an alarm, but woke shortly after 8 AM, anyway. I brought a latte up to the room after breakfast, relaxed in the room, and didn’t head out until nearly 11:30.

My goal was to explore a modern part of the city near the Danube River that included Sky Park, by the Architect Zaha Hadid, and Eurovea, a large retail mall, residential and office, mixed use space.

Rather than riding down the main street I followed the smaller streets trying to visualize a different way to get there than I have gone in the past. It’s much harder to navigate here because the city is not on a grid, so I was pleased to get there, without getting lost, and to see some new things along the way, and also some things that I recognized from previous walks or rides, which helps to build my mental map of the city.

There’s lots of lovely side streets like this where the trees meet overhead, and there is parking and a very empty single lane of traffic, which feels very comfortable to ride on.

This is the street adjacent to the Medical Gardens. The last time I was here there was just a florist. It’s very popular to buy flowers to put on the graves here. Today there were food trucks as well, with a surprising number of people using them on a weekday.

The new area has very high-quality cycling infrastructure. The roads are being built as complete streets right from the beginning.

Here’s another example of construction using the multi-use path  so a protected path is created on the road.

Bratislava is divided by the Danube river and has seven bridgescrossing it. They all have pedestrian and cycling infrastructure. Many of them have spiral ramps like this which are at a very comfortable grade for climbing up onto the bridge. I’ve uploaded videos of me riding up and down the bridge. When watching the video, you might need to choose the gear icon for settings and choose a higher picture quality if the video doesn’t look very good when you begin viewing it.

The bridges are generally quite high, and feel light and airy underneath.

This median bike lane wasn’t open when I was here in the spring. Unfortunately it is rather short and when passing the mall, there is a cyclists dismount sign. I didn’t.

There is no surface parking in this whole area, and the entrances and exits to the underground parking all have the same design.

The sun was beautifully lighting up the Slovak National Theatre this morning.

In this picture, there is inviting seating along the Danube, with the Eurovea shopping mall and residential buildings to the south. You can also see the Old Bridge, a transit and Active Transportation only bridge, and behind that the UFO bridge.

The reason I wanted to come to this area was to see a new piece of public art that was installed since I was last here.

It is called Octrahedral Body by the artist Viktor Freso. He often uses spheres in his work. There’s an interesting video about it on Instagram.

The high  today was forecast to be 10° and it felt much warmer than that sitting by the sculpture, so much so that I had to remove my coat. I decided to ride up onto the Apollo bridge to view the sculpture from there. Once I was there, I decided to continue across the bridge to the Danube Cyclepath. This oval spiral took me down to the path. The path runs 3000 km from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. I rode from Vienna to Bratislava on it in the spring, and also into Hungary.

I cycled along to the Old Bridge and up the ramp.

Here you can see how they have separated lanes for street cars, bikes, and pedestrians. There is also a seating area for looking west toward the UFO bridge.

I decided it was time for another coffee and headed over to Zaha Hadid‘s Sky Park. The buildings are quite recognizably her architectural style. The area is mixed residential, office, and retail. There are plenty of gathering spots and the  landscaping is beautifully done.

Here’s another view of her buildings on the left with some new ones being built in a different, but also interesting design, on the right. There wasn’t a lot of sunny spots to sit there so I decided to head back to the Octahedral Body. I got takeout coffee from a shop in this building.

An hour and 20 minutes had passed since I had left, but the wind had picked up and it was now quite cool. I put my coat back on while I drank the coffee and ate my hard boiled eggs from breakfast.

Here are a few more pictures of the park between the Danube and Eurovea.

I stuck to the back streets again on the way back to the hotel, and came across some interesting apartments covered in ivy, turning red with the cold weather.

I ended up on this main street, but it had a multiuse path, but even riding on the road on a street like this is quite comfortable, because the traffic is not nearly as heavy, or as fast, as it is in Brampton on similar streets. Many of the buses here are electric, in addition to the extensive electric streetcar network.

When I got back to the hotel, I stowed the bike in the luggage room, and then went up to the room, to find that it was being cleaned. So I dropped my things off and went down to the mall connected to the hotel.

I bought myself a takeout latte and a piece of cake, and went back up to the room to rest, look at my pictures, and write the blog.

I have never noticed this before, here or elsewhere. There is a pedestrian light beside the motor vehicle traffic light, presumably so drivers can more easily determine if pedestrians have the right of way.

I walked back, almost to the Old Bridge, to BeAbout, a burger restaurant, to meet Michael and three of his colleagues.  It gets dark 40 minutes earlier here than at home, so it was fully dark for the walk. 

BeAbout was a large space in a basement, which unfortunately did not have great air quality. I hope no one in there had COVID. The food was good, though, and the conversation enjoyable. Two of the group are cyclists, and gave me some suggestions for places to ride. 

We took the tram back to the hotel and hope to have an earlier night. I haven’t decided what to do tomorrow yet.