I’ll make this brief, as I’m in an Internet café in Košice in south-east Slovakia, about 50 km from the border with Hungary and 100 km from the one with Ukraine.
We’re here for two nights, this being the second, after having overnighted in the delightful little town of Bardejov, at an absolutely fabulous pension.
The high point of Bardejov was, undoubtedly, the National Ukrainian Folk Choir, who were singing, playing music and dancing on a stage on the main square as we walked into town for the first time. The concert lasted for an hour, and the music and singing were absolutely stunning and made it very tempting to continue to drive eastwards.
Earlier that day, we had been rafting in the rain at Červený Kláštor in the Pieniny National Park. That was a lot of fun.
Here in Košice, Slovakia’s next largest town after Bratislava, it’s a very sticky 31°C; too hot to really contemplate doing much at all. The town is very nice, though, and there’s an excellent ice-cream parlour on the main square (as, indeed, there was in Bardejov). They do know how to make good ice-cream (or zmrzlina, as it’s known locally) in this country.
We’ll probably spend tomorrow night in Rožňava, just this side of the Hungarian border, so that we can visit some more caves on Tuesday. Then, that afternoon, we’ll drive down into Hungary, where we’ll spend somewhere between five and seven days, including a visit to the capital, Budapest.
After that, we’ll return to Slovakia and visit the capital of Bratislava, before heading to Vienna in Austria, and then back towards the Czech Republic, to take in towns in West and South Bohemia. In short, there’s still lots to come on ths trip!
Hungary threatens to be even hotter than it is here. We can only hope that the weather takes a turn for the cooler.