Day 3: Trenčín

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