We had am 08.30 flight from Stansted to Bratislava yesterday morning, which sounded quite civilised until I counted backwards and realised that it still necessitated us getting up at 03.30. I had been a bit apprehensive about how much chaos there might be at Stansted on a Saturday morning in August, but things seemed to get off to a remarkably smooth start as we arrived half an hour ahead of schedule and found that the Ryanair queue was surprisingly well organised. We maybe waited for thirty minutes or so to get to the check-in desk, but people were actually waiting in proper lines (which was a big improvement on last summer!). Unfortunately, when we got to the front of the queue and tried to check in our bag, things started to go a little bit wrong. After weighing and putting a sticker on the case, the man at the check-in desk informed us that we had been queuing in zone E when we should have been in zone F, and we'd have to go to zone F to get our bag put onto the conveyor belt. Oh dear.

It seems that the reason the queue had been a bit more civilised than last year was that different Ryanair flights were now supposed to be going to specific ranges of desks, rather than any flight going to any desk which is how it had worked previously. The man assured us that we wouldn't have to queue again, but when we got around to zone F there wasn't any way to hand over our bag without joining another queue. We were directed towards a desk which was technically for business class passengers (does anyone fly business class on Ryanair?!) but seemed to be serving more as a desk for anyone who had any sort of problem. The queue appeared short at first sight, but everyone in front of us seemed to be travelling either in a large group or with outsized baggage, and so we ultimately waited another half an hour in order to spend approximately 10 seconds handing our case to a member of staff. I was thinking how lucky we were to have been at the airport with so much time to spare before our flight... but in the end it turned out there hadn't been any need to rush anyway, because our flight was delayed, for an unexplained reason. It was nearly 09.30 before we were finally in the skies and on our way to Slovakia.

Bratislava feels like a place we have visited a lot (I think this is my fifth time here) but when we we started thinking about it yesterday, we were amazed to realise that the last time we came was as long ago as 2012, when we travelled from Bratislava to Budapest via Szombathely. That was so long ago that we didn't even have the blog! Our aim for this holiday is to explore some of Slovakia beyond the capital, specifically some of the more central and eastern parts which we saw from a train window in summer 2011, when we made a 30-hour railway journey from Bratislava to Kiev. Bratislava still felt like the best place to start our journey though, both because it's the easiest place in Slovakia to fly to and a beautiful city in its own right

It was after midday by the time we had landed and were able to make our way to the airport bus. At €0.90 for a ticket into the city centre, it was definitely a whole lot cheaper than the airport buses we took in Bergen and Stockholm earlier this year! Within half an hour we had arrived outside the main train station in Bratislava and decided to kill the time before we could check into the hotel at 2pm by having lunch in our favourite station cafe. The menu didn't seem to have changed a lot since we were last here, although the waiters maybe seemed a tad less surly than previously

We checked into the hotel just after 2 and had a bit of a nap to recover from our early start, before heading out for a stroll around Bratislava. Everything looked beautifully familiar as we approached the edge of the old town.

Before long we found ourselves in the main square, Hlavné námestie, looking at the old town hall with its pretty roof.

From there it was just a short walk to St Martin's Cathedral, which looked beautiful in the evening sunshine. I'm sure last time we were here it was all covered in scaffolding.

We walked from there to the Danube and then back into the centre of town to hunt down an Italian restaurant we had eaten at on our previous trips. We found it without too much difficulty and had a lovely meal, although it seemed to have become a bit more upmarket than we remembered it.

It was lovely to be back in Bratislava again and we made quite an early start to exploring this morning, walking into the town centre shortly after 8am in search of some breakfast.

The streets were a lot quieter than they had been on Saturday evening.

The main square was almost deserted...

...and we almost missed one of our favourite statues just around the corner.

We found a McDonalds which opened at 9 and while we ate breakfast, things began to get a bit busier. We were soon passed by several groups on walking tours, who looked suspiciously like they had come off cruise ships. I was slightly confused for a few minutes before I realised that they must be on a Danube river cruise!

It was turning into a bright sunny day as we left McDonalds and walked past the attractive building of the Slovak National Theatre.

This is just at the start of the pretty, but slightly unpronouncable, Hviezdoslavovo námestie.

Hviezdoslavovo námestie is a long tree-lined promenade which leads down towards the Danube at the far end.

We climbed up partway onto one of the bridges across the river and got our first view of Bratislava castle.

The temperature was creeping up towards 30 degrees by this point and we decided to head back to the hotel so that I could apply some sun cream.

When we ventured out again a little later, our first stop was the presidential palace.

We'd only ever seen this from the front before, but today we discovered that around the back of the palace there are some beautiful gardens.

This was the view of the front of the palace which we were more familiar with.

From the palace it's not far into the old town, but rather than head in that direction we turned around and began climbing up a rather steep side street. Our destination was Slavín, a memorial and war cemetery for Soviet soldiers who died liberating Bratislava from the Nazis in 1945.

From a distance the monument is unmissable, but the closer you get up the hill the harder it is to figure out where you are going. We ended up wandering around side streets for quite some time until we eventually came to a familiar-looking staircase which took us up to the memorial.

Slavín is a really interesting place to see in its own right, for the history and the rather Soviet-looking statues.

However it's also worth coming up here just for the views back out across Bratislava. In one direction we could see the cathedral and the famous UFO bridge...

...while in the other direction we had a fantastic view of the castle.

It was much easier walking back down to the town than it had been walking up! We stopped at a nice restaurant for a late lunch and then started on a mission to find Bratislava's blue church.

This is definitely one of the most stunning churches I've ever seen, but it is located on an obscure side street outside the main town centre, next door to some decaying tower blocks. It took us a while to track it down but we got there in the end

By this stage we'd managed to walk 11 miles so decided to go back to the hotel for a rest. We've had a great day in Bratislava though and are excited about exploring some more of Slovakia tomorrow

Our destination for today was the city of Trenčín, approximately 120km northeast of Bratislava. Trenčín was a place I had never heard of before I started reading the Bradt guidebook to Slovakia, but once I read about it I knew I wanted to visit, because it is home to one of the largest castles in Slovakia. The train journey from Bratislava takes around 90 minutes and so it was mid-morning when we stepped off the train in Trenčín station. I had suggested we carried the guidebook with us so that we could make use of the map of Trenčín when trying to locate the castle, but it soon became clear that the map was going to be extremely unnecessary, because this is what we saw from the station platform.

Wow, that definitely is a big castle! It also looked like an extremely high castle, so we decided to warm up by exploring the lower part of the town of Trenčín before we tackled the ascent.

Trenčín is one of the ten largest cities in Slovakia, but it's actually not quite as big as Nuneaton, so the town centre is compact and has a pleasant feel.

We walked through the city gate and found a cafe which was advertising iced frappés for the amazingly low price €0.90. It seemed like too good an offer to pass by so we decided to give them a go. They turned out to be quite different to frappés in England (very foamy and not very sweet) but it was a hot day and nice to have a cold drink.

We walked into the main town square.

It had a rather bizarre fountain which seemed to be providing endless amusement for the children of Trenčín.

At the far end of the square, this unusual building turned out to be a synagogue.

The main church in the centre of the town was unfortunately in the process of being renovated, and so completely covered in scaffolding. We did, however, see this pretty yellow church set on a hill above the town.

We contemplated climbing up some steps to it but in the end decided to save our energy for the main climb up to the castle!

The path to the castle was quite steep in places, but we were soon within the lower walls. As we got higher we began to be rewarded with views out across the Slovakian countryside.

Finally we were there! We only paid €3 to enter the castle grounds. You can pay more to go inside the buildings, but this is only possible on a guided tours and the guided tours are in Slovak, so that didn't seem like the best idea.

There has been a castle at Trenčín since Roman times, though the origins of the current castle date back to the 11th century.

As we walked around the fortifications we had some brilliant views back down to the town. The synagogue in particular was easily recognisable.

In the distance we could also see the surprisingly large river Váh.

And we realised we were now significantly higher than the church we had decided not to climb up to earlier.

As we followed one of the paths along the walls we were surprised to come across a display of birds of prey. Some of them looked rather mean.

Though some of them looked quite cute (if you ignored the claws!).

Once we had finished exploring, we started making our way back down again towards the town.

We had some fantastic views of the castle on the way down...

...and the path was definitely a lot easier going down rather than up!

On the way down we finally found the yellow church...

...from where there was also a great view back up to the castle.

Once back in the town, we found a nice Italian restaurant for a late lunch. I had a spaghetti bolognaise, Tim had a caesar salad, and between us we had a couple of glasses of wine and a beer. When the bill came we were amazed to see it was only €15! Slovakia seems to be even cheaper once you get outside of Bratislava.

Trenčín is a really pretty place with a very impressive castle, and we definitely succeeded in getting off the beaten track today, away from any other English tourists

Tomorrow we will be leaving Bratislava behind and making the long train journey to Poprad, where we will be spending the rest of our holiday.

Today we were leaving Bratislava behind for our next destination of Poprad. Our train wasn't until 11.55 though, so we were able to have a relaxing morning in Bratislava first, walking into the town centre for breakfast and even picking up a handful of children's books in Slovak from a discount book store.

Poprad, which with a population of around 55,000 is the tenth largest town in Slovakia, is located about 330km from Bratislava, in the eastern half of the country. The town is on the main railway line between Bratislava and the second city, Košice, so there are regular train connections, with the journey taking around four and a half hours. The Slovakian Railways operate a wonderfully simple and logical system, whereby the price of your ticket depends on the number of kilometres you are travelling and nothing else, and the price of one-way ticket to Poprad on this basis was €14.92; a bargain when you consider it's only slightly more than it costs me to get from Birmingham to Nuneaton every day!

The train was comfortable and we had some beautiful views of the hills and forests of the Slovakian countryside. As we got nearer to Poprad, the views became increasingly hilly but the weather also became increasingly cloudy. There had been a clear blue sky when we left Bratislava, but it seemed like the forecasters might be right that the weather was a bit more unpredictable further east.

It was still just about dry when we arrived in Poprad around 16.30 and began walking towards the apartment we'd booked. First impressions were a bit mixed; the clouds were obscuring the mountains and the area around the railway station didn't seem to be the most attractive. As we got further away from the station the buildings became prettier though, and we soon ended up in a pleasant suburb where Google indicated the apartment was located. At this point the map we'd printed became rather vague, but as we were having a pause to try and get our bearings, a very helpful man came up to see if we were lost and pointed out that the place we were looking for was just across the road. Phew.

The first drops of rain were just starting to fall as we went inside to check in. The lady on reception was quite serious and seemed to spend a very long time examining our passports, but when she showed us into the apartment I was relieved to see that it was really nice. We were paying €50/night which is quite expensive by Poprad standards, but in return we have a comfortable (albeit rather green!) seating area, a dining table and kitchen area, a separate bedroom and a slightly random alcove in a corridor with two bunk beds.

We also have a bathroom which has something that looks like a sauna in it and overall is about as large as our bedroom at home. Unlike the bathroom at the Mercure in Bratislava, it even has a door too

We are staying here for five nights so we unpacked a few things and then set out to find the centre of Poprad. The closer we got, the strong the rain became so when we got to somewhere which looked fairly central, the first thing we did was take refuge in a rather modern-looking shopping mall. We decided to get a drink somewhere while waiting for the rain to hopefully pass, and stopped at a cafe which we belatedly realised was probably quite posh. Poprad prices seem very affordable though; I had a coffee and Tim had a beer, and in total the bill came to €2.90.

We left the shopping centre and tried to optimistically convince ourselves that the rain was easing up, but actually it turned out that it was doing nothing of the sort. We spent a while sheltering in a random doorway and watching the main street turn into a river.

Eventually things did start to dry up a bit and we were able to start exploring.

First of all we found a building that looked very much like a castle...

...and then we found ourselves in the main square.

The main feature of the square is the church of St. Egidius.

There are also some colourful buildings on either side of the street.

We took refuge from another shower in a cafe near the square which happily served pizza (for me) and burgers (for Tim). It was starting to get dark as we made our way back to the apartment, but the clouds had moved on a bit since earlier in the afternoon and we got our first proper view of the Tatras

The weather looked even worse this morning than when we went to bed this evening, if that was possible, and we couldn't see any mountains at all when we left the apartment. This was as the forecast had predicted, so we went ahead with our rainy day plan for a trip to Košice.

Košice isn't a very well-known city, but it is the second largest city in Slovakia and has even been the European City of Culture in 2013. It's located in the eastern part of Slovakia, only about 20km from the border with Hungary and about 80km from the border with Ukraine. From Poprad it was a journey of just over an hour on the train, through a very picturesque and hilly landscape.

As the train pulled into Košice, the city itself didn't look terribly picturesque at all, with large communist-style housing blocks and a fair amount of heavy industry. Once we walked out of the train station, however, we immediately found ourselves at the edge of the city park, which was much more pleasant.

We strolled around the park for a while before entering the main town centre. The first building we saw when we emerged was rather surprising.

This is Jakabov palác (Jacob's palace), although it isn't actually a palace in the normal sense of the word but was built as a private house by a seemingly rather eccentric builder called Peter Jakab in 1899.

We didn't have a map of Košice but the town centre is quite small and compact, so we were able to stroll around and discover things by accident. There were lots of pretty colourful buildings in the centre of town...

...and plenty of churches too.

This impressive building was the East Slovak Museum...

..while this one was the town hall.

The biggest street in Košice is simply called "Hlavná ulica" (Main Street) and is lined with attractive buildings.

I particularly liked this Franciscan church.

In the middle of the street there is a large plague column, which was built to celebrate the end of a plague epidemic in 1710.

Behind the plague column there is little park with a fountain, which leads up to the State Theatre.

The most unusual park in Košice, however, was a bit further on, behind the theatre.

It's hard to capture in a photo, but all the jets of water in this fountain were moving in time to music which was being piped from somewhere in the trees. We could see lots of lights in the water, so I assume that at night the jets of water are illuminated in different colours. It's known as the 'Singing Fountain'.

By coincidence, we happened to be standing in the park just at 1pm. The music from the fountain fell silent all of a sudden and these bells started ringing a tune instead!

At the far end of the main street, we found the most famous building in Košice, the cathedral of St Elisabeth. This is the largest church in Slovakia and apparently also the most eastern Gothic catehdral.

The construction of the cathedral started in 1380 and continued until 1508.

When seen from further away you get an impression of just how large it is.

Behind the cathedral is another small park. This one doesn't have a singing fountain, but it does have this statue, which depicts the coat of arms of the city of Košice. Košice was apparently the first town in Europe to get its own coat of arms in 1369.

The sky looked like it was beginning to darken at this point so we decided to go in search of lunch, preferably somewhere where we could sit inside. As we walked along the main street looking at menus, we could definitely see a big difference here compared to Bratislava; almost all the menus in Bratislava are translated into English and/or German for the convenience of tourists, but in Košice they didn't seem to be expecting any tourists and almost everything was exclusively in Slovak.

In the end we managed to find one bar where we could understand the menu and went inside. We both had a delicious chicken schnitzel and chips, followed by some jablková štrúdľa (apple strudel)

Tim had a number of beers, I had a glass of wine and a Turkish coffee, and overall the bill was still only €28

We headed back to the station after that and managed to jump on a train before the heavens opened

Unfortunately we made a slight error of judgement in getting on a slow regional train to Poprad rather than one of the fast trains to Bratislava (which all stop in Poprad). The journey which had taken just over an hour on the way there, ended up taking over two hours on the way back. Lots more time to enjoy the (rather damp!) countryside and hope that the weather will take a turn for the better tomorrow!

The weather forecast last night had promised that today was going to be a mixture of sunshine and clouds. We stepped out of the apartment this morning to find that it was definitely a lot drier than yesterday evening, but the clouds were very, very thick and there wasn't the slightest hint of sunshine. We decided we'd better make the most of the dryness at least, and so decided to go ahead with our plan to ride on the Tatra Electric Railway.

The Tatra Electric Railway is an electrified narrow-gauge railway which runs from Poprad up to some of the villages in the Tatra mountains. The first part of the line was built in 1896, with subsequent parts being completed by 1912. Little red trains continue to run on the route today, taking hikers and tourists up into the mountains. On days which aren't as cloudy as today, there are supposed to be some amazing views. And even on a cloudy day you can't complain, because the tickets are really really cheap

We started our journey in the main train station in Poprad, which has an elevation of 670m. The Tatra trains leave from a slightly different part of the station to the regular trains and you have to buy the tickets in special machines which only take Euro coins. As with the normal trains, the price you pay is based on the number of kilometres you are going to travel. A ticket to our first destination of Starý Smokovec cost us €1.50 each.

The journey to Starý Smokovec at 1,010m took around half an hour. The train started out at quite a fast pace as we pulled out of Poprad, before becoming slower and slower as the track became steeper. We were definitely getting closer to the clouds, but when we got off the train in Starý Smokovec around 10am it was still just about not raining.

The first building you see when you get off the train is this very grand hotel. The village has been a popular resort since the nineteenth century.

The guidebook had said that the church here was worth seeing, and it did indeed seem to be a very pretty building.

From beside it we just about had a view back down to Poprad.

There were quite a few interesting buildings in the village.

This one appeared to be the town hall.

And this one was called Švajčiarsky Dom (Swiss House). It did look rather Swiss

From Starý Smokovec the Tatra railway splits off into two directions. We were continuing our journey towards Štrbské Pleso, but I had read last night on the Slovak Railways website that part of the track on this route was damaged and we would have to switch to a replacement bus service at some point. The train arrived at the appointed time saying that it was heading for Štrbské Pleso though, so we jumped aboard and thought possibly I had got it wrong. We had to buy a separate ticket for this part of the journey, but it only cost us €2.

The train continued to climb until it got to a small station called Tatranská Polianka. This was where I had read that the track was damaged, but there were no announcements and none of the other passengers seemed to be moving, so we stayed sitting on the train. It didn't make any signs that it was going to depart though, and after a minute or so someone must have said something because suddenly everyone started piling off the train and dashing round the corner of the station to where there was a sign about the replacement bus service. A bus arrived after a few minutes and we (just about!) managed to squeeze our way onto it.

We were on the bus for about 15 minutes until we got to a small station called Vyšné Hágy. The track was fine again after this point, so we waited for a few minutes and then transferred onto another little train which would take us to Štrbské Pleso, at 1,350m.

The architecture in Štrbské Pleso isn't quite as pretty as in Starý Smokovec (there are some bigger, more Communist-style hotels and restaurants) but the attraction of the village is that it is near a lake which is supposed to be one of the prettiest in Slovakia. Unfortunately when we stepped off the train it was clear that we were well and truly in the clouds now, and they seemed to be increasingly damp clouds!

We decided to hope for the best and walk around the lake anyway.

It was really beautiful there, even though we couldn't see any of the mountains behind it.

At times we could see little misty clouds blowing over the lake.

Until eventually it got very misty indeed!

It seemed like it might start raining in earnest at this point so we headed back to the village in search of some lunch. We accidentally stopped at what was quite a posh hotel, enticed by the fact that its menu was translated into English. Almost everyone else we encountered were Slovaks though and the prices were still cheap by UK standards.

Tim tried the soup of the day (goulash soup!) and then we both had bryndzové halušky, which is the national dish of Slovakia. Halušky are small potato dumplings (a bit like gnocchi). They served in a sauce made from sheep's cheese (but it tastes fine, so long as you don't think about the fact that it is sheep's cheese) and sprinkled with bacon. The overall effect is a bit like a macaroni cheese.

For desert we had a pancake filled with ice-cream (and rather oddly served with some flower petals on the plate!).

By the time we had finished lunch it hadn't exactly brightened up but it had definitely decided not to rain, so we decided to walk another circuit of the lake.

We also saw a sign to a place called Jazierka lásky (the lakes of love) so we decided to investigate those as well.

We have no idea where the name comes from, but they were two very pretty little lakes not far outside the village.

The tickets we had bought earlier in the day entitled us to travel from Štrbské Pleso on to Štrba, back down at 850m. This wasn't on one of the electric trains but on something more like a funicular; the track was very steep! Once we had got to Štrba we had left the clouds behind and were able to transfer onto a normal train back to Poprad, for an extra €1.20 each

We had a fun day and the places we visited were beautiful, even with the clouds, but it would be lovely to come back some time and actually see the views

When we woke up this morning we were relieved to see that the light coming through the bedroom window looked a bit brighter than it had on the previous two days. Sure enough, when we stepped outside the apartment we were greeted by a brilliant blue sky

Our plan for today was to visit Spišský hrad (Spiš castle) but the train we needed wasn't until 10.42, so we were able to have a leisurely stroll around the suburb of Poprad where we are staying first.

And best of all, as we headed off in the direction of the main train station we were finally able to get a view of the mountains behind us

From the train station itself there was an even better view.

I had seen pictures of Spiš castle on the internet and it looked like an absolutely amazing place, but a little bit difficult to get to. The castle is located on a hill above the town of Spišské Podhradie, but Spišské Podhradie doesn't have a rail service. The guidebook said implied that there were numerous buses directly from Poprad to Spišské Podhradie, but when I looked at bus timetables online I could only find a couple of buses a day, none of which seemed to be at appropriate times for a day trip. After a lot of research, I decided to easiest way to get there would be to take a regional train to the town of Spišská Nová Ves and a bus from there.

The train ticket to Spišská Nová Ves cost us a mere €1.50 each and the journey took around half an hour. Spišská Nová Ves is supposed to be a pretty town to visit in its own right, but we didn't have time to explore because we were on a mission to find the bus station, on time for our bus at 11.40. Luckily the bus station isn't too far from the train station so that part of the journey didn't take long. What did take a while was trying to locate the correct bus stop within the bus station! There were about twenty different bus stops, all with different timetables plastered on them and little signs indicating the destinations they served. We walked round about half of them, peering at the signs, until we discovered the stop for Spišské Podhradie was the one that had a queue of people at it. I guess we should have tried that one first!

The bus arrived promptly and the fare turned out to be a mere €1.70 each. Spišské Podhradie was the terminus station, so we were able to relax and not worry about keeping track of where we were. The bus driver drove at a tremendous speed down winding country roads, stopping every now and again to let a couple of people on and off in tiny villages. It was around 12.20 when we eventually arrived in the main square of Spišské Podhradie.

Spišské Podhradie might not seem like a very catchy name, but "pod" means "under" and "hrad" means "castle", while Spiš is the historical name for the region. The Spiš towns were originally part of the Kingdom of Hungary, then pawned to Poland by one of the Hungarian kings in 1412 to finance a war against Venice. The Hungarians struggled to repay the debt, with the result that the area belonged to Poland for 360 years, until it was annexed by Austria in 1772 and finally became part of Czechoslovakia in 1918. As we walked across the main square we got our first glimpse of Spiš castle and it was clear why the village had got its name.

The castle looked fantastic. It also looked quite a long way away!

Reports I'd read had been conflicting about how long it would take to walk from the village to the castle. The guidebook said 45 minutes, some websites suggested an hour, something I read on Tripadvisor sounded like it had taken some people several hours to get up. I needn't have been worried that it wouldn't have been obvious which direction to walk in, in any case.

We started the uphill trek, soon leaving the village far behind us.

The path was quite steep but it was worth it for the views we had as we got nearer to the castle.

There were also some lovely views of the surrounding countryside as we got higher.

It costs €6 to get in to the castle which is more than we paid earlier in the week in Trenčín, but this castle is definitely more impressive.

The castle was originally built in 12th century and was owned by the kings of Hungary for some time.

It burned down in unknown circumstances in 1780 and has remained a ruin every since.

Of course, there has been some restoration work done to make sure that the walls aren't about to fall down and to create paths for the tourists to walk on. You do have to be careful in some places though because the stones used for the paths are quite shiny and would definitely be slippery on a rainy day.

We explored the upper part of the castle first and had some fantastic views back down to the lower walls.

The higher you got the more you could appreciate the enormous scale of the castle.

It's possible to climb the tower, which you can make out in the centre of the castle here.

We decided to give it a go, although I'm not sure I would have done if I'd seen the staircases in advance!

As you can see from the photos (taken on the way down) they were extremely narrow. Luckily each staircase is relatively short and so people were waiting at the bottom for others to come down before making their own way to the top, meaning that at least no one was trying to pass anyone on the stairs.

The views from the top were definitely worth it though; both of the castle...

...and of the countryside.

Having made it down in one piece, it was time to explore the lower walls of the castle.

You can walk around a lot of the walls...

...which gives you some great views back up towards the castle.

After a couple of hours of walking around it was time to head back down...

...periodically turning round, of course, for more castle views

Ahead of us we could now see not only the village of Spišské Podhradie which we had come from this morning, but also the little village of Spišská Kapitula (slightly higher on the hill with the two spires).

We had some spare time before our bus home, so we decided to walk towards it.

Spišská Kapitula is a tiny medieval village.

The village is centred around the cathedral of St Martin, which is the head of the diocese of Spiš.

The guidebook had said that Spišská Kapitula was only a ten minute walk away from Spišské Podhradie. This is true, but what it had neglected to mention was that it was 10 minutes uphill, and uphill wasn't what we particularly felt like doing after our climb to the castle! The bonus though was that we did have some more great views of the castle from the main street.

We headed back to the main village square to try and catch a bus back to Poprad. The directions I'd written down from the internet suggested that there was going to be one at 15.45, but a bus (that wasn't mentioned on any of the timetables!) turned up at 15.30 with a "Poprad" sign on the front so we decided to jump onto that instead. The tickets cost us €2.50, but this one took us all the way back to the main bus station in Poprad without having travel via Spišská Nová Ves. Perhaps there are more buses in this part of the world than the internet lets on!

It was a dry evening when we got back to Poprad so we decided to have another stroll around the town centre. It looked better when it wasn't quite so wet

We stopped for refreshments, but Tim wasn't terribly happy with the size of the head on his beer

Before we went back to the apartment, we wanted to see another "Spiš" town - Spišská Sobota.

Spišská Sobota is technically a suburb of Poprad, but it used to be a medieval town in its own right.

If the guidebook hadn't mentioned it then there would be no way of knowing that it exists, because there are zero signs pointing to it from the centre of Poprad. It's only a ten or fifteen minute walk though once you figure out which direction it is, and there are some really beautiful buildings.

These ones looked like they might be the oldest.

The most impressive building is the church of St George.

Particularly the bell tower, which looks like it might be more at home in Italy rather than the middle of Slovakia.

The entire village was really pretty and definitely worth a visit.

We headed back to the apartment after that and in search of some food. We've had a brilliant day today and Spiš castle is absolutely stunning. I have a feeling that this won't be the last holiday we plan to Slovakia

The weather forecasters seemed to be divided about what the weather was going to be like today, but we were gambling on it being good or, at least, not raining. Our plan for the day was to travel to the village of Tatranská Lomnica, from where we would be able to take a cable car up one of the mountains.

Tatranská Lomnica is a stop on the Tatra electric railway, but in the opposite direction to Štrbské Pleso where we had been the other day. From Poprad we had to take a train to Starý Smokovec, and then change for the connecting train to Tatranská Lomnica. We had a wait of around 30 minutes in Starý Smokovec between trains, so we had another stroll around, making the most of the fact that it wasn't raining.

The weather was even good enough to see some of the mountains above the village today.

We had a much better view of the mountains when we arrived in Tatranská Lomnica though.

There was even temporarily a blue sky in places!

The cable cars in Slovakia seemed quite expensive when I'd researched them, but it was cheaper if you bought your ticket online in advance. I did this a few weeks ago and bought two return tickets up the mountain as far as a place called Skalnaté pleso. The cable car company subsquently posted me some sort of pass card, together with a letter (in English) saying that the tickets I'd purchased were loaded onto the card and so I didn't need to queue at the ticket desk, but would just be able to swipe the barriers. It sounded good - what could possibly go wrong?!

The first part of the journey is in little four-person gondolas. We made our way to the cable car station and joined the queue to swipe through the barriers. Tim went first and the swipe card worked perfectly, immediately opening the barrier. He passed the card back to me, I swiped it... and nothing happened. Oh dear. We were just trying it again in case I hadn't quite done it right first time around, when we attracted the attention of the man supervising the gondolas. He looked a bit like a troll and had a similar personality. He started shouting at us, I think for trying to use one card between us. I had the receipt for what I'd purchased in my pocket so I took out the paperwork in order to prove that we had definitely purchased two tickets. This didn't impress him at all and he shoved the papers back at me, saying "Info Centrum. Info Centrum" over and over again.

I gathered I needed to find somewhere called the Info Centrum to try and sort this out. Tim was already behind the barrier and the man wouldn't let him back out, so he had to stand and wait for quite some time while I went to track the Info Centrum down. Luckily it wasn't far away, but there was an enormous queue of all sorts of other people who seemed to be having problems with their tickets. When I eventually got to the front it took a while for the woman to understand what I was trying to say, but eventually she explained that each person needs to have a separate pass so I should have come to the Info Centrum first in order to get a second pass. How I was supposed to know this I have no idea, and I'm still not quite sure I understand the logic of allowing people to order two tickets online and then posting them a pass for one of them!

She agreed to sort me out a second pass anyway, which was good, but then we hit an unexpected second problem because I needed to pay a deposit of €2 for the swipe card. That's not a lot of money obviously, but all our money was in Tim's wallet which was in Tim's pocket behind the ticket barrier! So I had to go back to the cable car station, attract the attention of Tim, get two Euros and then join the queue in the Info Centrum again in order to get the card. Tim may have taken the opportunity to give the troll on duty a piece of his mind!!

Eventually it was all sorted though and we were off in the gondola towards the intermediate station, which is at 1,173 metres.

From there we changed to what was described as a 15-person cable car for the remainder of the journey up to Skalnaté pleso. Personally I think 15 people would have been a very tight squeeze!

There were some amazing views as we went higher and higher.

The station of Skalnaté pleso is at 1,751m. It looked a very long way back down to Tatranská Lomnica.

The mountain in the background is Lomnický Štít, the second highest mountain in Slovakia. There is another cable car which goes from Skalnaté pleso right to the summit, but this one is ridiculously expensive (€46!) and only a limited number of people can travel up each way, so the tickets sell out a long way in advance.

The views from Skalnaté pleso were great anyway.

The name Skalnaté pleso means something like "rocky mountain lake" and this turned out to be a good description.

The guidebook had mentioned that the path around the lake was rocky, but until we got there I hadn't appreciated quite how rocky they meant!

This was the path.

Some parts of it were okay, but other parts of it were rather challenging!

The lake was really in a beautiful location though

Once we'd managed to walk around it once without falling over, we decided it was time to head back down.

We had a late lunch of chicken schnitzel and chips, followed by some lovely pancakes.

The weather still seemed reasonable so we decided to catch the train back to Starý Smokovec, and from there get a connecting train to Štrbské Pleso, where we had been the other day. We were all ready to jump off the train once it got to Tatranská Polianka and get onto the replacement bus service, but they seemed to have done some quick repairs to the track because this time the train was able to go straight through.

We got off the train in Štrbské Pleso about an hour after we had left Tatranská Lomnica... and found it was starting to rain!

The cloud seemed to be much lower over here than it had been back in Tatranská Lomnica, so we still didn't manage to get a view of the mountains.

The lake was beautiful though and it was nice to be able to see it again

We managed to do a circuit of the lake and get back to the station in Štrbské Pleso just on time for the next train back to Štrba and Poprad.

It was another exciting day in some beautiful surroundings. Tomorrow will mostly be a day of travelling, with a 4.5 hour train journey back from Poprad to Bratislava followed by the flight home, so it may not be worth a blog entry. We have had a brilliant time in Slovakia though and it's definitely on our list of countries we'd like to travel to again