Located in Central Europe on the Danube River, Bratislava is the capital city of Slovakia. It’s close to Vienna, Austria yet feels a whole world away. The Old Town along the river has a quaint European vibe to it, but further out the city is filled with a myriad of large concrete buildings from the country’s communist past.
My husband and I spent one full week in Bratislava in August 2022 during our Year Long Honeymoon. While Bratislava is definitely a city worth visiting, you don’t need a week to see all the highlights. Three days is the perfect amount of time to have an active but not overly crammed schedule. After the three day itinerary I will share my personal budget from my week in Bratislava, plus what I think a typical tourist will spend in three days.
Table of Contents
Day 1
Bratislava Castle
The castle itself is a reconstruction, so it’s not the most impressive castle in Europe, but the museum inside is top notch. The Slovak National Museum is located in the castle and gives a very detailed look into what life was like in Bratislava during the communist era. We really enjoyed our time learning about the not so distant past of this beautiful country.
The other thing I really enjoyed in Bratislava Castle was climbing up the castle tower to get an amazing view over the city and the Danube River pictured below.
Old Town & Riverfront
After visiting the castle take a stroll through the Old Town. Located on the Danube riverfront, it’s a small area filled with many restaurants, cafes, and bars. There is a stark contrast between the typical “European style” buildings in the Old Town and the concrete communist era buildings found in the rest of the city.
For dinner I would recommend going to Slovak Pub or Flagship Restaurant. They are owned by the same company and have similar traditional Slovak menus. We dined at both restaurants in our week in Bratislava. The food is similar at both establishments, so choose Flagship if dining at a large and lively restaurant sounds fun, or at Slovak Pub if you want a more quaint dining experience.
Day 2
Devínska Observation Deck and Devínska Kobyla Former Missile Base
Today is a big day, so be sure to bring your walking shoes! The first stop of the day will be to an abandoned communist era missile base and an observation deck. You have to hike a few miles to reach the area, but it really is worth it! Plus the hike is mostly on pretty flat and easy trails. The missile base and observation deck are right next to each other on the top of a hill.
First, we took a tram out to the Devinska forest preserve. We were a little confused at first on how to find the trail head, but once we did the rest of the route was very straightforward. The trail is well marked and you can follow the signs to Devinska Kobyla.
Devín Castle
After leaving the Observation tower, follow the signs and trail blazes to Devín Castle. The hike down to the castle is easy as it’s almost entirely downhill. First you will come to the town of Devín but trail blazes continue through town to lead you to the castle. In total, we hiked just less than 7.5 miles for the day.
There is an entrance fee to the castle grounds of €6 Euro (as of 2022.) There are a few exhibition areas, plus a few separate parts of the castle to explore. Parts of the castle are over 1,000 years old, and there have been archeological finds indicating that there was has been a settlement in the spot for more than 2,000 years.
Dinner in Devín
After all the hiking we did, we were starving and didn’t want to wait to get back into Bratislava to eat dinner. There are a few restaurants right outside the castle and more in Devín proper. We chose Reštaurácia Devín located right around the corner from the castle. It was nothing fancy but it really hit the spot and was affordable. I got the dumplings with sauerkraut and bacon. I wish there had been more sauerkraut, like the dish we had at Slovak Pub, but overall it was still good!
After dinner catch a local city bus back to central Bratislava. There is a bus stop just a five minute walk from the restaurant.
Day 3
Everything on day three is located on the other side of the Danube River from Bratislava’s Old Town.
Explore the Petržalka Neighborhood
Petržalka is the most densely populated neighborhood in Central Europe with about 100,000 residents. This is due the the blocks and blocks of concrete apartment buildings constructed during the communist regime lasting over 40 years.
As it is mainly a residential area, there isn’t much to do but walking around will give you a real sense of what life is really like in Bratislava. In the post communist years the buildings have been painted with bright colors to make the neighborhood more cheerful, so it is nice to have a walk around.
Lunch at Slovenská Bašta
Slovenská Bašta has a daily lunch menu that is very affordable and authentically Slovak. I had beef with mushroom sauce and mashed potatoes and Andrew had pork and sauerkraut with bread dumplings. Each meal was around $8 and a good lunch portion.
UFO Bridge & Janka Kráľa Park
After lunch walk, Uber or take a bus to Janka Krala Park. There’s plenty of space to walk around and relax. There are a few interesting statues and monuments in the park as well. From the park you can go up into the UFO Bridge. You can pay to go to the viewing platform or go to the restaurant to have a drink and enjoy the view.
Budget
Bratislava is a budget friendly city, especially compared to its neighbors Vienna and Budapest. Slovakia uses the Euro as its currency and when we visited in 2022 the Euro and USD were almost exactly on par with each. I always revert to saying “dollars” but know the price was the same in Euro as well when we visited in August 2022.
Food
Slovak food is hearty, comforting, delicious, and affordable! What else could you ask for? There are also several nice malls just outside the city center with food courts offering affordable international and Slovak food. We stayed in an Airbnb with a kitchen and cooked a few times and found the groceries to be affordable too.
Our Total Food Cost for Seven Days: $252.68 or $36.10 per day for two people.
We spent $166.29 on 8 restaurant meals, or an average of $20.78 per meal for two people. The rest of our food budget was $70.34 on groceries and $16.05 on coffee and ice cream.
Lodging
We paid $46.50 per night for a private Airbnb with a kitchen and A/C. It was about 1 mile outside of the Old Town, but there were plenty of restaurants, grocery stores and a few malls around. We could walk into Old Town but took the tram most of the time.
Airbnb’s closer to Old Town are a bit more expensive, but plenty are available for under $100 for a full apartment. Expect to pay $75-$150 per night for a hotel in or near Old Town. A hostel dorm bed is around $15-$35 per night.
Transportation
We used the busses and trams almost every day we were in Bratislava. They run frequently, are user friendly and affordable. A single 30 minute ticket cost €0.90 in 2022. At the bigger stations you can use a card to buy tickets, but the smaller stations have ticket machines that only take coins. Once you board the bus or tram you need to validate your ticket in one of the machines on board.
We spent $38.95 on transportation in one week in Bratislava, but $22 of that was train tickets from Vienna to Bratislava. We only spent $16.60 on transportation within Bratislava for the week.
Activities
As of 2022 the Bratislava Castle Museum is €12 per person and entrance to Devín Castle is €6 per person. Those are the only paid activities we did, so in total we spent $37.29 on activities for the week. There are a few other museums in town that we didn’t visit, but expect all museum entrance fees to be under $10 (besides Bratislava Castle.)
Our Total Weekly Budget
We spent $672.02 in our week in Bratislava or $96.01 per day for both of us. We were trying pretty hard to not spend money during our week in Bratislava, as we had just spent a lot of money in Austria the week before. If we were on a “normal” vacation and not a year long trip around the world we definitely would have spent more. However we did go out to eat eight times and had a beer at most of those places so it is definitely possible to spend less than we did as well.
Expected 3 Day Budget
If you’re only staying for a few days I would expect the per day cost to be higher than ours, as you’ll be eating out more and doing paid activities more often.
For the above three day itinerary for two people the total cost will be around $400 or $133 per day.
This is assuming you stay in an Airbnb for about $60 per night, spend $50 per day on food, take a few tram rides or a taxi per day, and visit the two castles mentioned in the itinerary. Of course you could spend much more by staying in a hotel in the Old Town and having fancy meals each day.
Discover more travel budget info in the posts below!
Please let me know in the comments if you have any specific questions about visiting Bratislava or about our budget. Thanks for reading!
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