Avalon River Cruising in Europe - Next Stop Bratislava

Bratislava is the capital of Slovakia, and was the second stop on our journey.

Our city tour this morning included the following:

We started the tour in the very up-class part of the city where the United States Embassy is located ( It is designed after the white house and looks very similar) Up here we had an amazing view over all of the city and beyond.

We then stopped at the World War Two memorial where many Russian soldiers were killed during he liberation of Slovakia.

Then a visit to the castle of Bratislava, and heard a lot of  history that was associated with it throughout the years.  Including Maria Theresa the only female ruler of 40 years with sixteen children, including the Queen of France, the Queen of Naples and Sicily, the Duchess of Parma and two Holy Roman Emperors, Joseph II and Leopold II.  Now, it is used as a political facility, and is located right next to their parliament building.

The highlight of the trip to Bratislava was getting to adventure around the Old Town area, which was rich in culture and history. The architecture here is beautiful, as it has well designed buildings throughout this whole area.  The history of Old Town was quit mid-evil  and not a place you would have wanted to live back in the old days.  Our tour guide pointed  out this narrow alleyway where  the ‘Executioner’ resided and many lives were taken in this area many many years ago.

Further on down in the lovely area of town it was pointed out that below us is where the torture chambers are located still to this day.  They cannot be visited anymore but can be rented out for business meetings and parties?

Now why would anyone ever want to rent a place like this underground terror facility is beyond me, but it sure would be interesting to see it.   The torture chambers were used to torture and kill the witches in the city.   In fact, all women that lived back then  were considered witches, so I am really glad I did not live there during this period.

Interesting city but other then those areas visited the rest of city consisted of run down apartment buildings built during the communist time.  Rest of the afternoon was spent on board the ship catching up on  blogging.