The ship sailed while we slept, and we woke up just a few miles away from the docking at Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. We disembarked and walked to the center of this small, charming city. Several groups began the hike up to the castle. While the site has had various settlements since 3500BC, the current edifice is a restoration of the Baroque castle as it was in the time of Empress Maria Theresa. We walked the streets along the coronation trail marked with small crown medallions in the stones, showing the path where soon-to-be kings and queens would throw special silver coins made for the occasion to the people on the streets. The coronation church saw the crowning of 11 Kings and 8 Queens, including Empress Maria Theresa. It is now home to a large seminary for Catholic priests, which has trained many of the 3,000 priests that serve Slovakia's 5 million Catholics.

The aftermath of the communist era was certainly felt throughout Bratislava as it had been in Budapest. The view across the Danube from the top of the castle was that of a series of large, completely uniform apartment buildings built build by the , which the city has been attempting to The guide recited the Soviet-era proverb "if you think it don't say it, if you say it don't write it, if you write it don't sign it" to describe what living in those days was like. We came upon the memorial making the location of the Jewish synagogue that was destroyed during the communist era, which bore the word "Remember!" in both Hebrew and Slovak on the monument's base. In recent days, the theme continues, as Slovakia has experienced a massive influx of Ukrainians fleeing the conflict with Russia, receiving nearly 100,000 refugees since the conflict began.

After our walk down from the castle, we visited shops off the square to find little treasures before heading back to the ship for lunch and an afternoon of sailing to Vienna.