I thought I’d go sightseeing today, on the tour bus, see the castle, the history museum, and on down the list of top 10 things to see in Bratislava, but then well I decided why don’t I just ride my bike around n stop where and when I feel like it, and maybe I’ll just ride a circle route around town.
And I’m glad I did, I never got close to the castle, but I did cross the river on 3 different bridges, found the EuroVelo route 6 and 13 route out of town it looks good so I may not train to Prague Saturday may just ride up to Vienna. I saw a few nice riverside parks, a new shopping center going to open Oct 24, a big one, where there were installing a green plant wall along one side of it, I guess it’s 4 or 5 stories tall.
Next I found the huge old socialist housing blocks, I rode around those for a long time, so dense, the biggest bus stop shelters I’ve ever seen, and found an old concrete bunker out along the ring road, no you can go in, they had rebar and screens over tge entries, which were flooded, saw a pair of brass knuckles on top the wall, lots of graffiti.
Next I passed a horse racing track, beautiful turf track, a race day Sunday Oct 6 but I’ll be gone by then, took a pic to send to Big Steve, he’s a horse racing fanatic back in La Plata Maryland. Then I got dead ended they were building a new bicycle path and the big highways blocked me, so I kind of retraced my route, well really I ended up in the housing block again but not the same way out… when I did find my way out it was by the expo convention center, back to the river and the UFO tower, which is 85 meters high with a bar and restaurant at the top you have to see, well it was lunchtime but I looked up the menu lol it was way overpriced for me, but it was cool the UFO tower is the single point of support for the whole bridge structure there are a bunch of cables going both directions to support the bridge which has a separate bike/pedestrian bridge deck below the car bridge on top. And underneath as an awesome workout facility and a skate park for little kids!
One of the other bridges, the Stary Most was only for trams and bikes n pedestrians.
So back across on the third bridge with blue guardrails separating the bike lanes on both sides from the car lanes, then I went as far south til the bike paths and sidewalks and everything stopped, there was a Maersk terminal there and some industrial things… dead end.
Well as I turned back one great find a car wash ! One Euro for 100 seconds well I had a 2 euro piece on me so finally I got all that mud off my brakes wheels tires chain and frame and lubed it all up shiny clean again.
Back towards old town I looked at the map I was 10 km from old town so I started that way again, and came across a huge open air market, I mean huge like I walked my bike around it for 15 minutes never passed the same place and didn’t see everything, of course the farmers market and flower market I didn’t go into,,m there were lots of earring places of every kind and bargains on everything from clothing to tools electronics so I got some batteries for my flashlight/headlight and a new phone charger cable, one wore out already well I dropped it and it got bent so no don’t risk it breaking off in my phone get a new one for 2.90€.
Getting back to old town I meant to stop at Nivy, where they converted an old bus station into a big shopping mall, but I was getting hungry decided come back to the apartment eat here take a nap. Well asi got to old town here in the nice square in front of the opera was a photo exhibit showing a bunch of finalists for some competition, that took a while to look at most of them read the stories, very interesting especially the assassination attempt of their prime minister in May and some protest movements they had have going on here.
Finally 300 I got back had lunch and now a nap. So I didn’t go sightseeing for the hour tour but I did see quite a bit that the tour wouldn’t have shown me, and I got 30 easy miles in to boot.
Oh and I finally saw how to change my bike shop list and put the bike factory in there, so shout out to Alec for those Schwalbe Hurricane 26x2.1” tires he recommended for this trip, they been through dirt grass gravel mud water concrete broken up old concrete rock cobblestones pavers and I’ve only added air twice in 3 weeks and they are rolling fast on the smooth surfaces when I get them. And now freshly washed they still look like new!
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