Career Break Travel: Poprad & Bratislava

More of the Tatra Mountains?

Hardly.

With only 2 nights in Poprad, we just didn’t have enough time to explore the city, let alone the mountains, fully. We’ll definitely have to come back to Slovakia to explore more of the country!

Slovakia was our next stop after Poland, and the fourth country out of 10 that we visited on our 3-month long career break trip.

Days spent in Slovakia

6 days, with just 2 nights in Poprad and 3 nights in Bratislava

Highlights

Exploring our very first castle ruins – we walked the wrong way up to Spis Castle, taking the road for cars instead of for pedestrians! So rather than a quick 25-minute walk, we took almost an hour to get there. But a different route meant we got a different side of the castle!

We also had fun wandering in and around the Devin Castle ruins and saying hello to the fluffy sheep grazing the grounds. There’s a scenic view of Danube river when you climb to the top of the castle.

Lowlights

Unfortunately, this lowlight is the same as for Zakopane. We stayed too few nights in Poprad. We didn’t do our homework before booking the bus and hotel at Bratislava, so we only… stayed for… 2 nights…

Looking back, we should have stayed for at least 2 to 3 more nights. There was the AquaCity that we didn’t manage to enjoy and so many hiking trails we didn’t explore!

While on the bus from Spis Castle back to Poprad, a loud group of men and a young boy boarded it and they sat next to us right at the back. The boy of about 12(?) kept gyrating his hips on the seat next to me in a sexual way while the men laughed, and it was superrrr weird and uncomfortable.

Fun mention

It started hailing when we were on the bus from Zakopane to Poprad. Thank goodness it stopped before we got off! We were definitely not prepared for hail!

We got lost in translation while trying to get on the bus to Spišské Podhradie. After trying to understand the signs for which platform the bus was departing from to no avail, I started going up all the buses there to ask the drivers if they went to Spišské Podhradie.

No one seemed to understand me, and I didn’t understand what they were saying. So we missed our bus and had to wait another 1.5 hours.

Lesson learnt? Don’t arrive at the bus station right on time. Reach earlier unless we know exactly what to do!

Where we stayed

Our host, Viktoria, at her Airbnb in Poprad was one of the best hosts we’ve had. She was so welcoming and gave us so many tips on where to go and see. This was also how we realised we should have stayed longer in Poprad!

But when we asked her about Spis Castle, it seems that only local families with kids go there. She looked so puzzled when we were so pumped to go.