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Africa Senegal West Africa Road Trip

Dakar: The Gateway to West Africa

In late October, I flew out to Dakar to start a three-week trip in West Africa! The majority of this was through Wander Expeditions, but I tacked on a few days at the beginning so that I could explore Dakar before meeting up with everyone else in Banjul.

Because of the way that my flights were scheduled, the distance from the airport to the city, and the limited time I had, I ended up booking a private tour for the two days I had so that they could also handle my airport transfers. It was an amazing experience! I felt like I had a chance to see so much of the city and beyond, and my guide and I had some great conversations about Senegalese history, culture, and how Dakar fits into the broader West African landscape. I landed in the morning and we immediately headed out to Gorée Island.

Gorée Island is one of the most famous sites in Senegal. The history there is incredibly dark – it was one of the larger ports for the slave trade. I toured one of the homes that had been used for that and saw the Door of No Return, where countless people last touched African soil after being ripped from their homes and sold into slavery. It was very moving experience. I also appreciated getting African perspectives on this. I’ve learned about the Atlantic slave trade in US history, but that is primarily focused on what happened when enslaved people arrived in the United States and leading into the Civil War, the Civil Rights movements, etc. The exhibits at this museum spoke more about the capture, auctions, and harrowing journey across the ocean.

What makes it such a fascinating place is that despite that dark past, the modern day Gorée Island is charming. It’s chock full of colorful buildings and art galleries, and can absolutely hold its own with the types of islands I’ve been to off the coast of Croatia or Italy for a pleasant day trip. That dichotomy was unexpected.

The people at the gallery above are painting with sand! They’re using glue on their brushes to create the patterns and shapes, and then spreading the different colors of sand to make the pictures. If I wasn’t at the very beginning of the trip, I would have definitely wanted to buy one, but I thought these paintings would be too delicate to survive the itinerary ahead. We had lunch on Gorée Island as well, and walked around for a while. By the time we got back on our ferry to the mainland, I was starting to doze off. Whether that was from the heat or the jet lag was anyone’s guess, but my guide suggested I go back to the hotel, have a restful afternoon, and then we would start a little earlier the next day and get through everything else we had planned.

It was so cool to watch him play this instrument – it sort of seemed like a cross between a harp and a guitar.

I definitely needed the rest. And it was a good call to push the city tour to the next morning when it was cooler, because we started with the African Renaissance Movement! I was super excited to see this, because I had listened to a podcast about it. 99% Invisible did a whole episode on how North Korea has helped fund and produce art for African nations in a very interesting diplomatic move. We headed up the stairs to the top, where I got to see the plaque honoring North Korea’s aid in creating it. From what my guide said, this was designed by a Senegalese architect and then North Korean sculptors helped to create it, then shipped back the pieces for assembly in Dakar.

We visited a few other sites across Dakar before heading north out of the city. Most notable was Pointe des Almadies, which is the westernmost point on mainland Africa! I always find it interesting to see how we mark those types of extremes – sometimes, like the Four Corners in the United States, people will say it’s boring, but it’s also so fun to me that we as a society took the time to both measure and celebrate these rare borders or geographical locations. Earlier this same year had been my very first visit to Africa, and I had been on the complete opposite side of the continent.

From Dakar, our next stop was Kayar, which is a fishing village. I loved this visit. First of all, I was clearly the only tourist. It wasn’t all that far from Dakar, but it was so far removed from the development and bustle of the city that it felt like being in another world.

We walked along the beach and watched the fishermen work. This wasn’t the only fishing village I went to on this trip, but it was my favorite because I was only with the one guide and I felt a little less intrusive than when I was with the big group. I could stay quiet and watch the rhythms of how they worked, the men pushing the ships out to sea or pulling them back in, with the men standing along the shore waiting to haul in the catch and the women working to get the fish ready to sell at the market. It looked like hard work.

The elaborately painted boats were also amazing to see up close. Kayar had so many, as far as the eye could see in both directions. After we had walked along the shore for a bit, we walked through the area where they were drying the fish, and by then the guide and I had gotten a bit lost from where the driver had parked so we walked through town to find a new place to meet up.

After lunch, we headed to Lake Retba, also known as Lac Rose. You may have seen gorgeous pictures of the pink water – those are outdated, as of fall 2022. There’s been flooding and it has diluted the algae and salt levels, so it mostly just looks like a normal lake now. Nonetheless, it was still nice to visit. We did a 4×4 tour along the coast, which was fun, and then a quick boat ride on the lake.

I posted this on Instagram and got a lot of responses of people telling me this janky-looking boat gave them stress. We didn’t sink, I promise!

From there, it was back to the airport and onward to Banjul! A lot of the trip is still left to come, but reflecting after the full three weeks, I would still say that Dakar was one of my favorite destinations from this trip. It’s one of the top places I would recommend to people if they are interested in traveling to West Africa, especially if they are less familiar with the region. The development that I saw in progress makes me really excited for the future of Dakar as well. It was a great start to the trip!

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North America United States

Virtual Sundance 2025

It’s time to interrupt my irregularly, not-scheduled travel blogging to talk about movies! It’s Sundance time. Miraculously, the online component still exists in some form, which means I still get to partake even though I don’t live in Utah anymore. This year, I watched 11 feature films.

Atropia: Off to a great start! Conceptually, Atropia was super interesting. I liked a lot of things about it. There were some really funny parts, the acting was strong, and I loved the play between reality and what’s scripted. I think that it ended up being a less sharp satire than it could have been. It wanted to say a little about a lot of things, and it also wanted to be more of a romantic story than a satire in the third act, which weakened it for me. That said, I’m not going to punish a movie for being overambitious in its themes, and I did have a good time watching it.

Bunnylovr: As a character study, I think it was decent. Katarina Zhu’s acting was great. It was a little slow for my tastes – I kept waiting for something to happen, and it never really did. I was waiting for it to lean in to the creepiness of her benefactor and go for more of a stalker/horror angle, but that felt a bit underexplored. It had a lot of potential that I’m not sure it lived up to.

The Things You Kill: While it starts as a fairly straightforward revenge plot, it takes a pretty bold turn in the second half. It took me a minute to figure out exactly what was happening but after reflecting on it, I absolutely loved it. The film has a lot to say on the patriarchy, generational trauma, and cycles of violence. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to track down this director’s other work, but that’s on my to-do list. Also, the cinematography and shots of the countryside in Türkiye were stunning!

Sorry, Baby: Incredible. From the very first scenes, I was so drawn in. The acting was amazing, and Agnes and Lydie’s friendship felt like one of the best, most real portrayals of female friendship that I’ve ever seen in film. It was so much funnier than I thought it was going to be, and it paired that with this raw emotion to tell Agnes’s story of healing. Definitely would recommend this one.

By Design: The description of this had me hooked. “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.” Unfortunately, the reality of the film wasn’t as compelling for me. It was weird, but not in the way that I wanted it to be. I think it has some interesting ideas about the people around Camille projecting their own desires onto her as an inanimate object, but it still never quite hit the mark. There was an animated show about a cult, Praise Petey, that was weird in a lot of ways but had this recurring bit where the main character’s fiancé was a literal wooden board called Brian and no one ever acknowledged that he was, in fact, a wooden board, which was my favorite joke in the series, and I think that’s what I was chasing here. Every so often, I would get a glimmer of what I hoped it would be, but overall it wasn’t for me.

Omaha: So good and so emotionally devastating. There is an action taken about a half hour in and I thought, surely it can’t get sadder than this, and then it did. I haven’t cried this hard at a movie in a while. Really well done.

Rains Over Babel: I really enjoyed this. The concept (gambling years of life with Death in a Colombian nightclub) was awesome, they executed it well, and as a bonus, the set and costume designs were colorful and fun. The beginning introduced a lot of characters all at once, which made me a little worried as we started off on our story, but it did a great job of wrapping up the loose ends. Fun to watch, and hopefully it gets a wider release in the US!

Sukkwan Island: I watched this more or less right after Rains Over Babel and boy, was it jarring to go from Colombian night clubs to an isolated cabin in Norway. A lot of thoughts on this one, most of which can’t be shared without spoiling a fairly major portion of the plot. The ending was very polarizing, if the reviews on Letterboxd are anything to go by. I found the framing interesting, but not necessarily believable. Still, as a thriller in the Norwegian wilderness, it had a lot of tension and very compelling performances by its two leads.

Bubble & Squeak: Similar to Atropia – this one had such a fun idea and I’m not sure it quite lived up to its potential. Great cast, beautiful cinematography, some fun moments. In Sundance 2023, I went to go see Infinity Pool, and one of the funniest things for me is that those two movies have essentially the same premise, a tourist who violates the law in a fictitious post-Yugoslavian country, but could not be more tonally different. I think this could have been a sharper satire but I still enjoyed myself.

DJ Ahmet: This was delightful. It was set in a small town in North Macedonia, and balanced the serious and the comedic quite well. Charming, with a lot of heart, and it offered the most functional father-son relationship of anything I watched over the course of the festival.

The Virgin of Quarry Lake: My final film of Sundance was billed as a coming-of-age horror movie set in Argentina. I liked its witchy, dark vibes and I thought the ending was pretty strong.

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North America United States

Weekend in Nashville

Of the states I had remaining, Tennessee was one of the ones that surprised people the most. It’s understandable, since Nashville has developed quite the reputation as a party city. It seems as though every other bachelorette party is taking place in Nashville at any given time. I was still taken aback when I left my hotel mid morning on a Friday and found people wandering through the streets, already drunk. I asked my waitress about it at lunch and she told me this was normal.

It’s funny, though, because it really doesn’t take much to get away from the party scene. The first “touristy” thing I did was head to the Capitol, since that was only open on weekdays. It only took two or three blocks away from Broadway for the bass of the music to fade away.

I don’t necessarily seek out US state capitals, because often our state capitals are out of the way, but I do think it’s fun to go to those when I can. In a delightfully moment of Southern hospitality, the man who was doing security at the Capitol asked me where I was visiting from and then proceeded to tell me all about the time that he took his son up to Washington DC so they could go to the Smithsonian together.

The Tennessee Capitol building was really pretty. It was also interesting that they didn’t go the route that a lot of them seem to, where they have the dome and look similar to the US Capitol building. The Utah one looks so similar to the US Capitol that they actually used it as a stand-in in Legally Blonde 2 when Elle goes to Congress. Tennessee has gone with a different structure, which looks more like a courthouse from the outside.

I also headed to the Country Music Hall of Fame! Nashville has a huge amount of country music history, and this museum was a great crash course. There are a lot of options of places to go within Nashville for more music history, if you’re a huge fan of country, but I am not so I figured this was my best place to start.

It was a cool museum. Because so many famous artists came through Nashville, or recorded there, there was enough that even I could appreciate, and if you are a fan of country music, you would probably have a much bigger appreciation than I did!

One of the number one recommendations for a visit to Nashville is to go to a show at the Opry. It came up on basically every recommendation that I saw. The fun thing about the weekend I went is that there was actually a Christmas special being filmed, so I bought a ticket to go see Little Big Town’s Christmas special. I figured even if I had no idea who Little Big Town was, I would at least know some of the songs!

It turned out to be such a good idea. It was so fun to go to a live taping – I’d never been to one before, and it was interesting to see how it all gets made. Once or twice, they had to fully repeat a song. Sometimes they would flub a word on the intro and re-start it, or pause for a few minutes to fully reset the stage. I love seeing what goes into all of it, and then knowing at the end that it will all be re-edited into a seamless presentation. The artists I didn’t know ahead of time all did a great job, and they also had some guests that I did actually recognize, like Sheryl Crow and Josh Groban!

Nashville was a great weekend trip. The party scene was a bit much for me, especially on a solo trip, but even when I didn’t spend tons of time at the bars on Broadway, there was still plenty to do and a lot of nice areas to wander around. The accommodation options were pretty expensive but clearly it’s because of the high demand!

I’m kind of obsessed with this fancy neon Taco Bell

Anyway, that’s a wrap on Nashville. I’m down to my last four states! Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana are the ones I have left, and I’m excited to get to explore those too.

Categories
Europe France

Last Night in Lyon

I don’t have that many photos of Lyon, partially because we spent most of our time there at one museum and partially because it was raining pretty hard when we arrived. After two weeks of going through a heat wave, it was a relief to feel the cooler air on our skin. It had felt as though the heat wave had been following us across the continent.

We started by heading up the funicular to Fourvière Hill, which has an old set of Roman ruins as well as a couple very nice churches. It might have been a more fun area to explore if it hadn’t been raining so hard – it didn’t seem like a lot of things were open, so we worked our way back down to the main part of the city. We had a great lunch back on the bottom of the hill and then headed to our next site.

Most of our time was spent at a museum I had found online, which was Musée Cinéma et Miniature. This managed to capture two things I love! I find movie behind-the-scenes to be fascinating, and I enjoyed seeing all the different aspects of props and mannequins and costuming that creates so many of the famous characters of pop culture. They had a really cool section on Wes Anderson that had a whole section about how they filmed Asteroid City, and the elaborate sets that it takes to get those perfect aesthetic shots. The top floor was dedicated to miniatures, which were SO cool. I’ve always loved those kinds of dioramas – the Art Institute in Chicago has a great room of them, which was one of my favorite sections. These were beautifully done.

After the museum, we really didn’t do much. The next morning was a very long day – we were getting up early so that we could take a TGV back to the Paris airport and then board a flight to head back to DC. Plus, we had to repack, because the advantage of taking trains is that you don’t have to worry about the strict luggage limits or liquid rules, and so we had to get ourselves back into compliance.

Overall, I liked what I saw of Lyon. It had a nice energy, and it is absolutely somewhere I would spend more time on a future French itinerary. Also, it was a very nice change of pace to have French pricing for food instead of Swiss pricing for food on the last day of our trip!

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Europe Switzerland

A Train Journey Across Switzerland

Once we left Vaduz, we headed to Zurich! The train ride across the country from Sargans was absolutely gorgeous. I was immediately impressed with the landscapes in Switzerland.

The view from Sargans train station!

We didn’t end up spending much time in Zurich. Ultimately, we weighed it against the other places we were going, and we didn’t feel like one day in Zurich would do it justice, so we felt like our time would be better spent in the smaller cities on our itinerary. That said, we did walk along the water and it was beautiful. The next time I visit Switzerland, I’ll definitely give myself a little more time to explore.

With our first full day in Switzerland, we headed to Lucerne! We started in the Old Town, walking across the famous Chapel Bridge and visiting the Lion of Lucerne, a somewhat controversial monument within Switzerland that’s located in a quiet garden.

From there, we got on the first ferry we could find and took it a couple stops to the charming town of Weggis, on Lake Lucerne. We sat near the water and had lunch (and watched the birds try to work up the confidence to steal our food), and overall had a lovely afternoon. The app that we had been using to organize our train tickets also worked on the ferry, and it was so smooth.

On our way back to Lucerne, we stopped off at one more location on the ferry. If you know Sam at all, it should not surprise you that he had read about the Swiss Museum of Transport, and he was interested in going. The museum seemed hella expensive, but I came around on the prices once we’d experienced it – there were a ton of exhibits and they were done really well, covering all different types of transport and appealing to a lot of interests.

The next morning we headed to Bern, the capital of Switzerland. Bern has about a third of the population of Zurich and is one of those capitals that everyone forgets, which of course made me more interested in going. And it delivered – it felt delightfully quirky. They’re obsessed with their symbol, the bear. Our hotel had paintings of bears doing all sorts of activities, like playing poker and drinking beer and rock climbing wearing harnesses. And when I researched what to do in Bern, multiple sources assured me that I couldn’t possibly go to Bern without going to see the bear pit. So we went to see the bear pit.

The Old Town in Bern was very charming. I loved their giant clock tower in the middle of the city. There were lots of cafés and restaurants and shops, and we had a nice time walking around through the streets and exploring. It also felt like a manageable size. We didn’t need to go to seek out any particular area to feel as though we got the vibes of the city.

Bern is also where we tried Swiss fondue for the first time! Well, it wasn’t Sam’s first time. He’d been to Switzerland before. But I was pretty excited about the prospect.

The next day, we crossed into French Switzerland. I’ve always found the multi-lingual aspect of Switzerland to be particularly interesting – and while we didn’t cross into the Italian or Romansh areas, I would be interested in that on a future trip. I did love seeing the culture and the architecture changing slowly as we move from East to West. We went as far east as Bratislava and then made our way steadily west all the way to Lyon, which meant we covered quite a large swath of Europe laterally. Some themes across their history were repeated in museum after museum, but we also got to watch as the different histories collided and morphed from one culture to another. It was such a cool trip.

We started with the train down to Lausanne, where we stored our luggage. This was more of a pain than I expected, since the locker situation in Lausanne station was woefully inadequate for a city of their size. Nonetheless, we managed to find a solution, even though it required several extra buses (and no, I’m not salty about it at all, why do you ask?).

Once our luggage was settled, we made our way over to Montreux and Château de Chillon. There’s so much along the shore of Lake Geneva, and I’m sure we could have spent several days in that region alone, but as always, we had to prioritize. We made a quick stop to say hello to the Freddie Mercury statue and then headed to the castle!

Château de Chillon is one of those castles I’ve wanted to visit for years, and its views of Lake Geneva were stunning. Even with the grey and rainy weather, the castle was gorgeous, and the inside is so well preserved.

And with that, our time in Switzerland came to an end. We spent our last night in Geneva and had one more fondue dinner, which was even better than the one in Bern. For as much as we saw, I know there is so much more that we couldn’t get to, and I have a long list of places I’m interested in when I eventually make my way back. The prices are high, but as long as you prepare for the sticker shock, Switzerland is an excellent destination with a lot to offer. I’m glad we were able to go as part of this trip.

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Europe Liechtenstein

Learning About Liechtenstein

There we were, in our hotel room in Innsbruck, and Sam asked me what I knew about Liechtenstein. Not much, I admitted. I was intrigued by this tiny country tucked in between Austria and Switzerland, and I’d researched what kinds of things there were to see there, but I wasn’t particularly familiar with their history. So we did some research!

Liechtenstein was founded by the Liechtenstein family, who bought the land in order to have a vote in the Holy Roman Empire. Basically, they needed land that didn’t have an intermediary feudal lord, and this small stretch of land fit the bill. Shortly thereafter, the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, but the Liechtenstein family kept the land and it was one of their many castles. They didn’t visit particularly often.

It wasn’t really until the years leading up to WW2 that the Liechtenstein family took a look around at what was happening in German-speaking Europe. And they did not like what they saw. They started moving their money and resources out of Vienna and the rest of Austria, and moved into their castle on the hill in Liechtenstein. Then they asked Switzerland to help them stay neutral through WW2, which worked! They managed to keep their sovereignty and preserve the microstate.

This includes historical and recent satellite pictures of every town in Liechtenstein, which underscores their size

Liechtenstein also has a strange relationship with democracy and civil rights. Wikipedia calls them a “semi-constitutional monarchy,” which might be underselling it. In 2003, they adopted a new constitution after two referendums were put to a vote. One of the referendums was called the “Constitutional Peace Initiative,” which was intended to amend the constitution to restrict the prince’s powers, and this failed by a vote of 83.44%. The other, which passed by 64.32% of the vote, was called the “Princely Initiative” and gave the prince power to dismiss the government, nominate judges, and veto legislation. The BBC has said that Liechtenstein is effectively an “absolute monarchy” and the Venice Commission has said that the new constitution is “not compatible with the European standard of democracy.”

The Prince watching over Vaduz from above

Liechtenstein has the dubious honor of being the last country in Europe to allow women to vote. Women’s suffrage was finally approved in 1984. While we were there, the National Museum had a celebration of 40 years of women’s voting! While it’s absolutely wild to see such a recent year on that milestone, the exhibit was really well done. They went through the entire timeline of women’s suffrage, including important decisions on related feminist issues, and there was a section across the hall where people could respond and make posters about voting and having a voice.

Learning all this gave us a fascinating visit to the National Museum! I am always interested in the stories that countries tell about themselves, and Sam and I had a great time reading through as much as we could from the museum. It was even better for Sam since he can speak German. We also went to the Treasury, which was mostly Fabergé eggs, but had maybe the coolest entrance of any museum I’ve been to where they gave us a coin that unlocked the exhibit. We made a quick stop to the Postal Museum as well, then got some lunch and made our way into Switzerland.

Liechtenstein is tiny, but its unexpected history made it way more interesting than I’d thought it would be. I learned a lot in our brief, museum-filled visit, and I’m glad Sam and I took the time (and the multiple buses) required to visit Vaduz.

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Austria Europe

Adventure in the Alps

From Salzburg, it was about two more hours on the train and we found ourselves in Innsbruck! Austria and Switzerland were amazing for transportation – the fact that Swiss trains run on time should surprise no one, but there are also apps in both Austria and Switzerland that allow you to simply take whatever train you want, turn it on as you board, turn it off as you exit, and the app will calculate your fare, applying any discounts or fare caps that you might qualify for. We had booked a few things in advance, but not everything, and it was amazing to be able to just figure it out as we went.

Innsbruck is stunning, right next to the mountains. I wanted to do some sort of day up in the mountains while we were in Central Europe, and while I’d originally expected that would be in Switzerland, there were several good options in Innsbruck. One option is visiting the ski jump, but we opted instead to take the gondola up to Nordkette!

It starts with a steep funicular up the mountain, and then two gondolas until you get to the top of the mountain. From there, you can take a short walk to get to the peak. It was a bit windy but the views were stunning, and we were happy to get out of the heat for a little while. Throughout our entire trip, we seemed to be following a heat wave across Europe – it wasn’t until the very last day when we had grey skies and rain.

From there, we had lunch at the restaurant at the top and worked our way back down the mountain, taking the two gondolas and then the funicular. It was quite crowded, and we waited in fairly long lines at each stage. Luckily, it didn’t feel too crowded up at the top once everyone had spread out, but we were glad we weren’t in a hurry to get back down to the city.

What we saw of Innsbruck was lovely, although we spent comparatively less time in the city. I think it would have been interesting to go to a museum here, in Tyrol, as I could feel the cultural shift in Austria as we moved from Vienna to the comparatively less urban regions, and I would have liked to get a sense of how they viewed their national identity as well. But there were still many museums ahead of us on this trip and the mountains were calling.

This was our last full day in Austria! I loved Austria – I would absolutely go back. It has the natural beauty of Switzerland but for much more reasonable prices, and so many towns and cities came up in my research that looked like they would have been fun to explore. Hopefully I can make it back at some point soon. Our last few hours in Innsbruck, though, were spent researching our next destination: Liechtenstein! And it turned out it was a lot more interesting than we’d expected.

Categories
Austria Europe

The Hills Are Alive

….with the sound of music! It is so funny to me that Austrians are generally unfamiliar with The Sound of Music. Coming to Salzburg and making a pilgrimage to the filming locations has been on my bucket list for longer than I even knew what a bucket list was. Somehow, the movie never caught on in Austria, though, so they regard the tourists who are recreating Do Re Mi on the steps with bemusement.

It was a two and a half hour train ride from Vienna, so we arrived in mid morning. After dropping our bags off at the hotel and grabbing a quick breakfast, we headed to Mirabell Gardens! It was a beautiful stroll through the park, although it might have been more pleasant if we weren’t in the midst of a massive heat wave. From there, we worked our way over to the Hohensalzburg Fortress on the top of the hill.

The fortress provided me with one of my all time funniest moments in a museum. We were in a section on military history, and it was going through various weaponry, regalia, and other details about Austria in various wars. We got to a whole room on WW1. I’m always fascinated to see how various parts of Europe reflect on WW2, and I leaned over to Sam.

“I wonder what the next room will say about their military history,” I said. And then we walked into the next room to find…. A brand new exhibit on the Middle Ages! Are you interested in the recipes they cooked? The lutes they played music on? We just skipped all of the Austrian military history after, say, 1918, and we never went back to it. It was Middle Ages for the rest of the tour. I’ve decided that’s my new favorite segue when I don’t want to talk about something.

The city managed to feel both quaint and lively. My favorite area to walk around was over by the university, which felt a little more laid back. We had lots of good food options and ended up taking a bus out towards the outskirts of town to an Indian restaurant, which was fun to see a different area outside of where the majority of tourists were congregated.

Salzburg officially wins for fanciest Foot Locker, by the way. I was stunned to see the corporate logo above the door.

Salzburg had been on my list for so long, and it didn’t disappoint! I liked Vienna, but I loved the rest of Austria, and I would absolutely go back and explore more of the countryside and the smaller towns and cities. The next morning, we boarded another train and it was off to Innsbruck!

Categories
Europe Slovakia

Day Trip to Bratislava

Because we had a few days in Vienna, we had time for a day trip to a surrounding area. And Bratislava was on the top of my list! There aren’t many places where there are multiple world capitals that close together, and it was an easy hour long train ride to get there. The train station isn’t the most convenient to the city center, so we also took a bus to get closer.

It’s not a huge city. Slovakia only has about five million people across the whole country, with about 730,000 of those in the Bratislava metro area. Old Town is particularly compact, and that’s where most of the tourist sites are. We felt pretty content with a day in Bratislava, although I think you could extend it if there were more museums you were interested in. If I was going back to Slovakia, I would focus my attention on the national parks in the eastern side, which look gorgeous.

If you’re picturing Bratislava, it’s likely that you’re imagining the castle on the hill. We started our day there! It had a lot of exhibits. We started in the basement section, which had more of the history as well as the foundation of the castle. From there, we headed up, where there were additional exhibits on military history and artwork. We were starting to reach our limit of museums for the day, though, and we wanted to see more of the city, so we went back down the hill and into the city center.

Bratislava was the farthest east we got during our trip. As we headed back west, we had the chance to start to draw parallels, from the castle we saw in Luxembourg to Bratislava and to the fortresses that we found on hills in Salzburg, Vaduz, and Lyon. And while we all know about the history that shaped this region in the 20th century, we got a chance to see multiple exhibits across multiple countries about the Romans and much earlier eras of history that replicated across the continent.

It also had a lot of charming cafés, some nice street art in the form of statues, and the types of winding alleyways that seem like they’re straight out of a fairy tale. While the main area was a bit crowded with tourists, it was easy enough to find a quiet side street as well.

All in all, Bratislava was a charming and convenient day trip from Vienna, and definitely worth a look if you’re in the region. It’s not the most exciting capital city, but it was pleasant to spend some time in. I’m always interested in new regions and new places when I travel, so it was exciting to get a taste of Slovakia!

Categories
Austria Europe

Vacation in Vienna

I have been to Austria before this summer, technically. When I visited family in Germany, we walked across the border and went to a café and had a pastry. I’ve counted it as my 7th country visited, right between Germany and Finland. But I’ve always known that I wanted to come back and explore, because Austria has a lot to offer!

From Paris, Sam and I flew to Vienna. We originally wanted to try the night train but it sold out too quickly. It was a bit of a strange time to be in Vienna – I hadn’t realized it when we’d booked, but it was meant to be the same dates that Taylor Swift was in town. At first I was glad we had found a reasonably priced hotel but worried everything would be crowded. Then, when the concert was cancelled due to the foiled terrorism threat, it morphed into a different worry. Huge shout out to the Austrian authorities for figuring that out and preventing the attack!

This isn’t my best picture but it does show one of the many Taylor Swift related discounts that the shopkeepers in Vienna offered!

It didn’t impact our trip, really. It meant a few areas were more crowded, and instead of tourists taking photos, it was sad would-be concert goers exchanging wristbands and singing in the streets. The stores were offering discounts to anyone who presented a concert ticket, usually at 22% as a tie-in to Taylor Swift. It was sobering to think that something tragic could have happened while we were there, and a little ironic for it to happen immediately after we left the massive international event that is the Olympics.

Anyway. On to Vienna! This was one of our more chill stops – most of what I wanted was to experience café culture and explore some of the neighborhoods. After so many busy day trips out of Luxembourg and the excitement of the Olympics, these were a few days to rest and enjoy being in a beautiful city before we went back to traversing through Central Europe by train and switching hotels every night.

The amount of pictures I’ve taken of ceiling domes is probably excessive but look at it!

Vienna is known for its museums – so much so that there’s actually a whole district devoted to them, called MuseumsQuartier. If I’ve learned anything from living in DC, it’s that it’s all too easy to get museum’d out, so we picked the one we were most interested in and started there – the Museum of Austrian Contemporary History, which covers their history starting in 1918. The museum was housed in the Hofburg in Heldenplatz, which was a gorgeous building!

In love with these haunting pictures of abandoned checkpoints rendered obsolete by Schengen and Free Movement

Austria has a bit of a complex relationship with its recent history, as, I suppose, any German-speaking country in Europe might. This was a theme throughout our trip. When we were buying our ticket, the woman actually asked us if we realized this museum wouldn’t have any history from before 1918, seemingly confused why we would want to go to this one. It was fascinating – Austria seems to want to have a dual narrative of WW2, in which they were both completely innocent of any actions taken by the Nazi regime and also that they were never conquered as a nation. The two ideas seem to be at odds, yet both are present throughout their telling of history.

I’ve heard travelers debate at length about whether Vienna is boring. I think there is a sense that everything functions as it should, that all its edges have been worn away and replaced by public parks and efficient transit and more cultural institutions than you could ever hope to see in a single visit, and that it makes Vienna somehow less interesting than places that are less organized.

I love this federal government building tbh

Was Vienna my favorite place we went to? No, but I liked it a lot. And if you told me I had to pick somewhere to live in Europe for a few years, Vienna would be among my top choices. There’s something very pleasant about being somewhere where things just sort of…. work. I also had an excellent time in the rest of Austria (more on this soon!) and would love to return at some point to see more.