Strečno castle

To those non-Slovaks, this town is pronounced like "streatch-no." Yesterday, Hanna, Emily and I set out on a train to Strecno (hmm, can't make that special C in the text for some reason) without any real plan. Emily is a self-proclaimed expert at getting lost. She, however, was the one that was in charge of finding trains AND the castle that we wanted to explore. There are two castles - one which is open to tourists and has stairs leading to the top, and one less commercial one which you must summit at your own risk.  In true "adventure warrior" style, we chose the second. After walking for at least 30 minutes, we found the first sign of any castle besides the big obvious one. [See where the 3 mountains overlap? You can see something barely peeking out...that's our destination.] We were just following the river. It was a beautiful day, albeit a bit chilly, and so we didn't mind the hike.

We followed the road for a while until we gave that up and just went straight up to the top; forget winding around the mountain, that's much too inefficient! We wore our snow pants for a reason! The view was so rewarding. It was sunny and bright and so magnificent. We explored the castle remains and thought up what could have taken place in all of the rooms that still half existed. We were the only ones up there; it's kind of neat to have an entire fortress all to yourself. Both of them are climbers. Emily especially was constantly thinking of ways to climb the castle walls. But the 1000 meter cliff that the castle was situated on made for an unfortunate fall into the river below. I have "adventure sport" insurance for a reason, but I didn't see the need to push that limit. This is the best attempt at justifiying our amazing view:

After a while, we turned back down the mountain and explored the very small town. We were in desperate search of another traditional Slovak meal - halusky. It's basically Slovak macarroni and cheese and it's going to be our second Slovak cooking experiment. We walked for hours and ended up with ka'va and pivo (coffee and beer), playing cards in a smokey bar filled with large, older men.  It was a fun day together. We're making the most of the week that Hannah has left here. Here's a picture where you can actually see the three of us: me, Emily, Hannah on the bridge watching ducks try to walk on the frozen water.