Another new country

Sigh of relief

We were relieved to have made the flight successfully on a redemption ticket rather than staff standby.

I reckon there may have been only 3-4 empty seats on board (hard to judge with some empty seats belonging to people going to toilets or walking around).

The initial idea was that the route was served by both China Airlines and EVA Airways, each having flights within about an hour of each other.  That made us feel pretty safe on standby.

But when a schedule change saw the flights departing within about 25 mins of each other, there would be inadequate time to try a second flight if the first was full.  Fortunately, we were able to get a redemption ticket each.

Arriving in Vienna

We landed in Vienna at 0650, five minutes ahead of schedule.  Despite missile exchange between Iran and Israel, our flight was not affected as both China Airlines and EVA Airways seem to track through Turkmenistan as a norm for this route.

Kim had slept more or less the entire time between the two meals whereas I had about 3h30 of sleep and perhaps the same amount of time dozing or semi-awake.

We both felt OK as we disembarked into the small immigration hall not far from the aircraft.  With no bags to collect, we were in the public area within 20 mins of disembarking.

That meant we had 2h to kill before our bus to Bratislava, which had been pre-booked to avoid higher fares and the possibility of seats being sold out at the prior station.

Time went pretty quickly freshening up ourselves, answering nature’s call, snacking, and doing a dry run from the arrival hall to the train in preparation for our late-night arrival later this week where there was a small risk we would miss the hotel’s latest check-in time.

The dry run proved invaluable as we had trouble purchasing a ticket to the hotel at St. Marx station.  It had to be typed in exactly as “St.” including the fullstop, not “St” or “Saint”.

New country

Our bus to Bratislava departed on time at 0925 amid the grey weather which had unloaded some moisture in the hours before.

We crossed the border at 0950 before disembarking after crossing a large bridge at 1010 at SNP Most Station.  It was a couple of minutes by foot to the Bluebell Hotel where we have a couple of nights stay.

Exploring Bratislava

It was too early for the hotel to let us into the room so we had nearly 4h to kill.  We started with a cuppa at McDonald’s before wandering around the old city.

It was cloudy and windy day after showers earlier in the morning.  We ticked off most of the sights of the old city in a couple of hours of aimless wandering and had a snack in a café.

Kim’s phone had gone flat, so we returned to the hotel to grab the power bank.  Fortunately, we managed to be let into the room around 1315.

We rested for the remainder of the afternoon before grabbing a salad, sandwich and meat patties from the supermarket deli, calling that dinner.

With the time difference and night flight, we retired at 2000.