Whilst we could have easily stayed in Budapest the journey had to go on, so after a well deserved sleep in and a huge home cooked breakfast we dragged our feet and reluctantly said goodbye to Budapest. Our destination was Bratislava the capital of Slovakia.
Firstly though we had a quick detour to Szentendre, a cute little town on the banks of the Danube River.
Research had identified that there was a strange Marzipan Museum and for some reason Keith was keen to go and see it. It was an odd little place, however we did have to admit that considering everything was made from Marzipan the art work was pretty good. You’ll recall the Parliament Building we saw in Budapest, well check out its replica!
It was a tiny town so after morning tea we continued to make our way towards Bratislava. Often we’ll be driving along somewhere on a back road, come around a bend and there is something amazing we could never have expected. Today we saw the hugest building in the distance, it looked amazing and so we decided to detour and try and find it. How lucky that we did as what we had stumbled upon was the Esztergom Basilica.
At 114 metres in length and at a height of 100 metres The Esztergom Basilica is the third largest church in Europe, surpassed only by St Peter’s in Rome and St Paul’s in London. Not only is the building itself incredible, the church interior is amazing, some of the best artwork and sculptures we’ve seen to date. In fact above the alter the piece Assumption of Mary, is the world’s largest altarpiece, painted on a single piece of canvas.
To give you an idea of how large the building is, you can see Keith hugging a column for scale.
The Basilica is located at the top of a very high hill, overlooking the town of Esztergom. The views were just awesome. You can see in the picture below the bridge that actually forms the Hungarian/Slovakian border. About halfway along the bridge it’s signposted that you’ve entered Slovakia.
We eventually made it to Bratislava, checked into the hotel and headed across the road to a Brewery (so very convenient) for dinner.
Cool Stuff We Did 