Holidays are great. You get paid days off. Your friends are free as well. Plenty of time to travel and you can share it with the people you like. The drawback is that everyone else is also traveling and if you haven’t thought ahead, all of the cheap airplane tickets are gone. I wasn't planning to do anything specific but then I realized there will be 5 days available for me to explore in September 2018. So, three days before the holidays I found the cheapest destination where no one else was traveling from Bulgaria - Bratislava.
I knew there are some mountains in the north of Slovakia. What I didn’t realize was that the High Tatras Mountains are so beautiful.
Early in the morning in Bratislava, I took the train to Poprad. From there I hopped on another smaller train and in the early afternoon, I was already in Stary Smokovec. My target was hut Chata pri Zelenom plese. I liked the hike. At the highest point of the trail, you see a beautiful view of the hut and the lake. That was the time I realized, coming to Slovakia was a really good idea. The hut was great with a few considerations: none of the huts will provide sheets or blankets - you need to have your own sleeping bag; the staff working in the hut didn’t seem to like people who don’t eat meat so much, although they made me a special menu after mocking. Despite that, the hut is perfect with a great location and I will definitely recommend staying there. You can book it online.
The following day I took the shortest path to Teriho chata (another great hut). The shortest path came up to be also the hardest one, part of it involving climbing on the left side of Medený vodopád and then climbing and descending from Baranie sedlo. The view of the last one was worth all the efforts. Somewhere around the way, I encountered a new friend. A fox was coming straight at me and it didn’t seem scared. I suppose the animal was used to people because we spent a few moments together before I was no more interesting to the fox. I walked all the way down to Bilkova chata where I slept and dined very well.
I decided to spend the next day in Slovak Paradise (Slovenský raj) where I was hoping I will have as much fun as I had in the Romanian canyon a few weeks ago. I liked it, but it wasn’t that entertaining like the one in Romania. There were more waterfalls but the trail was easier.
I slept in Poprad and on the next day I took the train back to Bratislava. I joined a free city sightseeing tour there and for about two hours I have seen most of the city attractions. I returned to Sofia that night. I visited another country in the same month. Join me for more mountains and adventures in my next post.
Cheers,
Eva