Bojnice and Poprad, Slovakia

On the morning of Friday 5th July I walked the 10 minutes or so from my accommodation to the Bratislava train station and boarded a train bound for Prievidza. Below I'm looking pretty chuffed with myself for negotiating the language barriers and getting on the right train at the right time!

The train trip took around 3 hours, then from Prievidza I eventually managed to find the right bus to take me the 30 minutes or so to Bojnice. Bus stations are definitely trickier to navigate than train stations! 

 

From the bus stop I walked the short distance to my accommodation: Hotel Lipa. There was a lovely view from the hotel patio.

Bojnice is a small historical town. It's main attraction, and the reason I had stopped here for the night is its beautiful 'fairy-tale' castle. Once I had settled into my room I couldn't wait to check out the castle. It looked nice and moody as the light started to fade.

 

The next morning I was up nice and early and headed back to the castle. It was a stunning day, so nice to get some pics of the castle with blue skies behind it.

 

  

 

 

It really is a stunning castle, I ended up taking literally hundreds of photos. It was well worth the slight detour to Bojnice for the night.

 

 

 

Around lunchtime I took a bus back to Prievidza, and then caught a train to Poprad, a journey of around 4 hours. Poprad is the gateway to the High Tatras Mountains, and even just arriving at the train station I started to get excited about spending some time up in the hills.

 

From the train station I walked the 15 minutes or so to the hostel I had booked for 2 nights. It's not every day your hostel room comes with its own sauna and plunge pool!

The next day I spent the morning wandering around Poprad. There wasn't a huge amount to see, but it was a nice enough town.

 

 Gelato is a perfectly acceptable lunch on a hot summer's day!

There were some nice views of the mountains from the top floor of the main shopping centre.

Apart from the mountains, the other reason people come to Poprad is for Aquacity. This place is insane! It's a huge big aquapark with 13 indoor and outdoor thermal pools. It was right across the road from my accommodation.

 

I arrived at around 3pm, and stayed until closing at around 9pm. Several hours of lounging in and out of thermal pools leads to one very blissed out and chilled traveller!

As the sun went down I got a nice sunset as it disappeared behind the mountains.

In the last 20 minutes or so before closing there was a small (and in all honesty, slightly naff) laser sound and light show. I watched until the end before wandering back to my room, happy after a relaxing day. 

The next morning I woke up super-excited, I was off to the mountains!!!