Beautiful Vienna, Brno and Bratislava

 Sarah has "holidays" about every 6 weeks for about 2 weeks. "Holidays" don't really mean "holy" days, but that's what everyone in the UK calls vacations. Or sometimes they also call them half term if it's half term. For Sarah's fall half term at the end of October, Josh happened to have a business trip in Brno. So, we decided to tag-a-long. This was the first time for us trying out the Budget European airlines, and we learned a lot along the way!! Especially what NOT to do! 
The app Hopper gave us a good selection of options for flights. The cheapest one was with Wizz Air, a Hungarian company. Booking online went alright, but anything cost extra, including seat selection, in person check in, anything but a small carry on. 

Here we are at the airport:

Sarah and I somehow managed to stuff 9 days' worth of clothes in a backpack. I did have to wear 3 jackets! (light, warm and rain jacket). Josh is just too large to fit everything in a backpack, so he paid for a roll on luggage in addition to the backpack. That cost about an extra 70 Euro, which was half the price of the flight ticket!

Our first stop was Vienna:

Memorable events: Going to the Karlskirche and listening to Vivaldi's 4 Seasons - Just an amazing concert. Would be worth to get better seats and sit closer to the musicians. The main guy was simply amazing!

Another exciting show, especially for Sarah and me was the Lipizzaner show from the Spanish Riding School. (Images are from Internet, since we weren't allowed to take photos): 

Navigating Vienna without a car was pretty easy. There were plenty of trams and subways. We made it to Schoenbrunn in about 20 minutes from downtown:

We learned lots of history about all the Kaiser and Kaiserinnen. Schoenbrunn was the summer residence of the royals, along with their 500+ entourage! The rest of the time the royals stayed in the Hofburg:

Here's the Opera house:

And the famous Prater:

And the best place for Wienerschnitzle and the best potato salad that I have ever had was at Figlemueller, so old, they may have invented the Wienerschnitzel. For dinner the wait was 2 hours long, so we had to plan in advance and book a table a week ahead.

The Schnitzel was so big, we only ordered one and split it into 3 parts with 2 potatoe salads and were plenty full. (We did have a late breakfast, and this was for lunch.)

Next stop was Brno. We took Flixbus from Vienna to Brno and that went without any problems and was so cheap, about €14 per person for a 1.5 hour trip. Brno is the second  largest city in Czechia. It's a pretty city and most exciting for me, the food was good and cheap!! 

I had racclette for €8!! I could have had fondue for €7!!

The Airbnb was also fairly cheap and very modern with a roof top terrace. One big problem was that the church bells kept ringing all night long!! How do people sleep here?? I really don't know. They ring every 15 minutes and then at 6 am they kept ringing for at least 5 minutes nonstop!!

View from the rooftop of our Airbnb. 

It was a bit harder to find English speakers here, and we later learned that the Czechs don't like to speak English and have a bit more National pride then the Slovaks. They also don't use the Euro in their country, even though they belong to the EU. People were friendly enough, but not as friendly as the people in Slovakia. What surprised us was how clean and modern the City was. Even more so than Vienna. 

Nice views from the hill up to the Spilberk Castle:

The Spilberk Castle on top of the hill:

Inside the Castle:

Nice illustration of the castle's water supply:

Here's a menu from a restaurant. Divide the price by 25 to get to dollars. 

It was soooo yummy!! 

Here are some more random city sights. Everything was in walking distance, so we never had to bother taking the tram. 

Nice little farmer's market close to our Airbnb:

Here's the Cathedral of St. Peter's and Paul, the "Petrov". Here's an interesting story about this church that explains why the bells ring at 11 am:

"This singular fact is a tribute to a legendary trick played by Jean-Louis Raduit de Souches on the Swedish army which was besieging Brno back in the 16th century.

As the story goes, the Swedes were occupying Brno and tried to attack and take over the Spilberk castle in the 15th and 16th centuries. But the Spilberk castle was defended by Jean-Louis Raduit. He had found out that the Swedes kept trying to take over the castle but couldn’t take it and that they decided to leave if they couldn’t conquer the city by 12 p.m. on the next day. So he sent a note to the cathedral and the cathedral rang 12 p.m. at 11 a.m. The Swedes left, thinking they didn’t make it on time. And since this day, the bells of the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral ring one hour earlier."

Here's the famous astronomical clock. Every day at 11:00 am this clock releases a marble that the lucky visitor can take home as a souvenir. 11 am is of course a tribute to the story mentioned above. 

Here's the creepy Brno Ossuary where thousands of skeletons are stored. An ossuary is a place where the villagers placed the skeletons after they ran out of space in the cemetery. 

And one more creepy thing hanging close to the city hall:

From Brno we took Flixbus to Bratislava in Slovakia. This time it wasn't as smooth. The bus was delayed 2 hours! Ugh! But it only cost €7 per person and took only about an hour. We got there when it was already dark and to our surprise, we found ourselves in a very chic modern place:

Soon we got to the downtown Bratislava and fell in love with this quaint beautiful city:

We loved the statues they had everywhere:

One of our favorite things to do in a new city is take one of their free walking tours (+tip). We learned so much history and got a great feel for the city and its people. What we learned is that the people in Bratislava are more open to visitors. Most people speak English, and the Euro is used here as the main currency. Overall, we enjoyed Bratislava quite a bit more than Brno. 

Holocaust memorial: Of the 15,000 jews in Bratislava, only about 3,500 survived. 

The Bratislava Castle:

The UFO from a distance:

Some famous slovak dishes: One thing we learned about the Slovaks, they love alcohol. Whatever fruit they have they ferment it and turn it into alcohol. And veggies are hard to find. 

They also love cheese. Here's deep fried cheese:

For a nice daytrip we took the bus to the Devin Castle. We caught some stunning views from the castle:

Funny story: On the way back to our Airbnb we saw the bus coming and started running to catch it but just barely missed it. A very nice man stopped right behind the departing bus and said "Hop in, I'll catch the bus for you." And he did and Sarah got to ride on a booster seat. Very much loved the Slovaks!!

The last thing in Bratislava that we did was visit the Multium Gallery with 6 space and mirror themed rooms. They were pretty cool to see: 

And here's an optical illusion to figure out:

The trip back to Vienna was a bit more problematic. We were supposed to take Flixbus again, but for the life of us we could not find the bus stop! When we finally found it we have missed the bus. So, we took the Uber to Vienna for €87. We spent another 2 days in Vienna and then headed home. We got another unexpected expense at the airport in Vienna. We forgot to check in online and Whizz Air charged us €35/person for checking in at the airport! So, don't forget to check in online and 3 hours early when using budget airlines and not at the counter!!