It's obviously been a long time since I've posted anything. We did go to Slovakia last year, in 2025, but our trip was cut short, quite sadly, by my mom dying while we were away. And in the few weeks before she died, she had wound up in the hospital after a fall in the middle of the night (one of many), and I was spending significant amounts of time during our trip on the phone with various doctors and nurses, constantly pacing around, trying to determine the next steps for when she would be discharged from the hospital.
But she died just days before she was to be transferred to a hospice care facility, and we needed to get back to the US so we could get her body transferred from the hospital morgue to a crematory. The whole experience was incredibly stressful and sad, which made it difficult for me to focus on the trip, much less document anything that we did on it.
But, we've given it another go this year, and on the whole it was a much better experience what with no parents or family dying this time around.
We didn't do a whole lot the first couple of weeks, and what we did do fell into what has now become a highly familiar and predictable pattern: spend the first night of arrival at Terezia's brother Tony's house (just outside Bratislava), drive the next morning to Terezia's mom's house in Podrečany in the middle of nowhere, spend the next several days trying to recover from jet lag while I work (remotely), and Simon spends all day on the quiet street out in front on a bike with his friend Mirko and other neighborhood kids. We go into nearby Lučenec almost daily to run errands, buy groceries, get ice cream from Záhradná, and we sometimes piddle around familiar but cool nearby sites like the Divín castle ruin.
 |
| Divín Castle is slowly getting its act together. After years of being free and unattended, the castle now charges an entrance fee, which you pay to a person in a small room by the entrance. |
We also go to nearby Tomášovce to visit Terezia's dad's grave and stop by the "Tomorrow's Bread" bakery, Pekáreň Klas, for some delicious just-out-of-the-oven bread.
 |
| Getting amazing super-fresh, still-warm bread from Pekáreň Klas, or "Tomorrow's Bread." |
The past few years, Tony had been generously lending me his road bike, but he's been riding it almost daily lately, so he arranged for his cousin Janko to lend me one of his bikes—a carbon-frame Canyon road/gravel-style bike (basically a road bike but with wider tires and slightly different geometry to accommodate gravel/dirt roads). This bike turned out to fit me better than Tony's bike (which is a size or two too big for me), and while it was pleasantly lightweight and nicely rigid, it still took a bit of getting used to in a few respects. The wider tires can make it feel a tad sluggish at times, though the lightness and rigidity of the frame did result in high downhill speeds. But his saddle, which is nice, just wasn't a good fit for me: after each ride, it felt like someone had worked my ass over with a baseball bat!
 |
| Janko's nice Canyon road/gravel bike. |
The new completely elevated stretch of the R2 motorway, that goes over the winding highway in the canyon between Kriváň and Mýtna, has finally been completed. This means the old two-lane highway that was previously the only way to get through this narrow corridor is now super quiet and much safer for road cyclists. I incorporated this into my route on two of my rides, and since it's quite smooth and pretty much all down hill, it was a blast!
 |
| An old house in the village of Podkriváň, which I passed through on a couple of bike rides. |
 |
| The new elevated stretch of the R2 "freeway" (er, motorway) between Kriváň and Mýtna has finally been completed! This is what it looks like from the old (and now very quiet) two-lane highway below it. |
About midway into the second week, we go to Bratislava, where we spend a couple of nights at Terezia's cousin Ludka's flat (where she lives with her husband Christophe and their two charming young kids). We piddle around Bratislava's Old Town, where Simon insists on going up both towers (the yellow one in the main square and St Michael's Gate at the northern entrance to the Old Town). Luculus on Hviezdoslavovo námestie continues to offer some of the best-tasting ice cream (and best, most gelato-like consistency), albeit the most expensive. I always make it a priority to meet up with my friend James one evening there at a pub on Hviezdoslavovo where we discuss the current states of Slovak and US politics, and bizarre Slovak cultural phenomena.
But this time, what we would do for the second half of the trip (when my vacation time began and we were free to travel anywhere, for days at a time) was kind of up in the air.
Terezia and I used to go to Prague for three-day weekend getaways when we lived in Bratislava, since we find it to be such a wildly beautiful and alluring city, but we haven't been back in about 11 years, since the very end of 2015! The reason, of course, is because we had Simon not long after that, and we felt that kind of trip just would have been too difficult to manage with him when he was younger.
I was honestly still apprehensive about doing it now, since he is still quite energetic, and still at an age where he is happy to just play and/or run around and do "fun" kid things. But he's also at an age where he's becoming increasingly observant of the world around him. So, he's right at a point where he's beginning to be able to appreciate, say, a new (to him) and interesting city, but he still has some fairly hard limits that you need to be attentive to when tromping around said city.
Prague
So, yes, we decided to spend three nights in Prague on this trip. Terezia's mom, who hadn't been to Prague since the 1990s (and before that the 70s), came along with us.
We went via train, like we used to do, which takes a bit more than four hours from Bratislava. We were, of course, reminded of all the myriad shortcomings of the still woefully inadequate and small main Bratislava train station, but once on the train, the ride was relatively uneventful.
We stayed at the Red Chair hotel, a modest but decent B&B right in the heart of the medieval historic center, on a relatively quiet, narrow street, which, importantly, had a larger room available that could accommodate all of us with one king-size bed and two twins. Terezia and I stayed here once before, back in late 2010, on our very first trip to Prague together, and I stayed there again with my dad when I took him to Prague in summer 2012.
Because we were with a young kid who, despite having loads of energy, does not want to spend all day walking around outside, and a woman in her late 70s who, although generally in great health/shape, is still, you know, in her late 70s, we took things slow and were generally unambitious about covering lots of ground. But this was fine. With temperatures starting to rise, and peak summer crowds beginning to swell, a city like Prague can be exhausting this time of year, so it was good to just take things slow, take lots of breaks, and enjoy the city at a more leisurely pace. We stopped at several random pubs whenever it was time for a break to get some refreshing Czech beer (and a soda and fries for Simon).
Simon liked the interiors of the Baroque and Gothic cathedrals. Not only were they very cool (temperature-wise) places to escape from the heat, but he was noticing and admiring all of the crazy artistic detail and the dizzying heights of the ceilings.
Charles Bridge in summer is miles better if you can get there around 9 am or earlier, before the crowds start descending on it. It makes for a much more tranquil stroll. When we used to go to Prague, it was often in winter, and the bridge was usually much less crowded then throughout much of the day. Nevertheless, each evening on our trip there, after dinner, Terezia and her mom would retire to the hotel room, and Simon and I would brave the crowds for an evening stroll across Charles Bridge and back.
Simon was impressed by Prague's extremely picturesque main square. Prague is really the biggest (and most attractive) European city Simon has now been to. Though he's traveled with us to Slovakia seven or eight times now, the biggest city we'd ever spent time in is Bratislava, which in terms of size, scale, but also just a sense of grandeur, is comparatively small.
One of the things that always piqued my curiosity about Prague's main square and the massive, dazzlingly ornate Týn cathedral that towers over it is how the cathedral has two fairly sizable buildings built directly in front of it, blocking the entire lower third (or more) of its façade. When I first visited Prague in 2010, it was hard to find any information about this online or elsewhere, but I yearned for an explanation, because this kind of arrangement is pretty unusual. What I did find back then, however—that Jesuits built those buildings directly in front of the then-Hussite church to undercut the "radical" Hussites and confuse their parish by blocking the front entrance—was apparently incorrect!
 |
| Looking straight up in front of the front entrance to Týn. You can see how the façade is built directly into the buildings in front of it. |
What I'm finding now is that those two buildings actually predate the cathedral, and the people who built Týn lacked the money or will to raze them (real-estate on the main square even then was exorbitant), so rather than spend large sums of money to buy up the buildings and then knock them down, they built the cathedral directly into the backs of them, and attempted to make up for obscuring the lower portion of the façade by focusing more on the verticality of its design and building upward, and grabbing people's attention with those unusually detailed fairy-tale-like towers. One of those buildings was reportedly an important and prestigious religious school at the time, which made people even more reluctant to move it.
I was bummed out to learn that nowadays (or maybe it's a summer peak tourism thing?) you have to buy a full Prague Castle ticket if you want to go the inside of the gorgeous Gothic St. Vitus cathedral. In the past, you could saunter in without a ticket, but you were limited to walking around the main, central nave area. While getting the castle ticket does allow you to walk around and into every corner in the vast cathedral's space, the crowds, even by 10 am, were nearly unbearable, and the ticket turnstiles at the entrance created a long, slow-moving line that extended down the north side of the building. We did get the tickets, though, and endured the crowds. It's such a beautiful cathedral inside and out, especially the south side facing the big square with the gorgeous tower, that I can put up with the crowds.
We then casually strolled through some of the more interesting parts of the castle before exiting, walking back down the hill, and taking a tram back to the center.
Food
I am sad to report that our now-former favorite Prague restaurant, U Parlamentu, no longer seems to make an absolutely stellar roast duck. On past trips, we'd hit up U Parlamentu the first night of arrival and feast on their amazingly tender, juicy, flavorful duck (a leg and thigh), which came with both bread and potato dumplings and a pile of red sauerkraut. This time, the duck was OK, but not nearly as moist or flavorful, while the sauerkraut was the regular white kind. Maybe it was an off night? For some reason, we did give them a second chance on our third night, and we all avoided the duck and ordered other things that we were all happier with (I got a classic, tender roasted pork with bread dumplings and sauerkraut, which was really good).
The atmosphere was slightly different as well. Every single time we'd been there in the past, there was a large table along a back wall where a boisterous group of older local professor-looking types would meet and talk over beer (all messy, shaggy hair and tweed coats). It was always the same people—we got to where we could recognize their faces. I don't know whether they all retired or moved away, or decamped to another hangout, but they were definitely not there on either occasion this time.
U Tří růží, another traditional Czech place, was a bit better. I ordered the pork knee, a massive roasted intact pig's knee, which I definitely needed some help with, but was quite tasty. Last time we tried to eat here, back in 2015, we were told there was an hour's wait, so we just went somewhere else. This time, we made a reservation only to find the place wasn't as busy as it was a decade ago. Terezia mentioned this to the guy who appeared to be running the place. He said that back then, they were getting tons of Russians, and that since COVID and then Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine that began in 2022, Russian clientele has dropped significantly.
In the restaurant's bathroom, Simon and I heard some guy puking his guts out in one of the stalls. You could hear his shaky, deep, agonized breaths between the intense waves of heaving. After Simon and I got back to our table, we kept eyeing the men's bathroom door to see what this guy looked like (a 20-something ruddy-faced British guy wearing a soccer—er football—jersey). Sadly, Prague still seems to attract groups of young men in stag parties who come for a weekend of getting obnoxiously blotto on Czech beer.
We also tried a new (to us) place called Kantýna, which is a modern take on the old-school communist-style lunchtime canteen, where you order your food cafeteria style by grabbing a tray and pointing to items behind a glass sneeze guard. But the meat-heavy menu aspires to be a bit more upscale (Simon and I each enjoyed a really good pile of pulled pork with mounds of mashed potatoes), and the decor is more modern, with minimalist metal tables, black-and-white tile flooring, and futuristic pendant lights consisting of long, ultra-skinny strips of neon-like light.
Controversial Air Conditioning
The hotel room, thankfully, had air conditioning, which we could control, even though it took pressing random buttons to finally get it to actually work. But then we kept getting into small fights with Terezia's mom over the use of the AC, since she, being Slovak, has this strange, stubborn resistance to AC, or really anything that would offer even a hint of relief from the heat. (Slovaks, and many of their Eastern European neighbors, have not yet embraced germ theory, so they believe that cool air from AC, or even a cool late-evening draft from an open window, can make you deathly ill and cause you to have "muscle fever" (involuntary contractions of and injury to one's muscles).)
Alfons Mucha and Communism
On our second full day, we went to the Mucha Museum, followed by the Museum of Czech Communism, both of which are kind of in the same corner of town.
The Mucha Museum, we discovered, is now one of two (just a few blocks apart) small museums focused on the work of the famous Czech Art Nouveau painter Alfons Mucha. We went to the other one way back in 2010, but when Googling the "Prague Mucha Museum" this time around to find the address and opening hours, only one museum kept showing up in our searches, which had it in a new location in the Savarin Palace. Basically, this new Mucha Museum opened up a few years ago, and is now the one that is approved by Mucha's descendants. The other, older one used to be Mucha-family-approved, but for some reason no longer is, yet it still very much exists, despite no longer coming up in Google searches or on Google Maps as readily as the new one. I read that both museums are comparable in size (i.e., relatively small), quality, and cost (kind of steep for the size), and that unless you're a diehard Mucha obsessive, just visiting one—either one—is fine.
 |
| Tromping up the steps of the rococo entrance to the new Mucha museum. |
I enjoy Mucha's commercial Art Nouveau work that he's most famous for, but it's his giant Slav Epic series that I find most intriguing. We got to see all 20 of these giant paintings in person back in 2013 at an exhibition at Prague's Veletržní Palace (which I wrote about here). The size of these paintings is part of what makes them so impressive, but Mucha's ambitious attempt at chronicling the history of Slavic people across Eastern Europe and the Balkans via painting is equally eye-opening. Unfortunately, this Mucha Museum only had reproductions of some of the Slav Epic paintings (the real paintings currently live in a museum in Moravský Krumlov, near Brno).
 |
| The Slav Epic, cycle no. 1: The Slavs in Their Original Homeland. Between the Turanian Whip and the Sword of the Goths (between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD) |
 |
| The Slav Epic, cycle no. 3: Introduction of the Slavonic Liturgy. Praise God in Your Mother Tongue (9th century AD) |
The Communism Museum is now in a new location, a few blocks away, in a larger space in a modern building. The older one, in the palace where the new Mucha museum lives, was a bit cramped, with slightly jumbled displays, looking at times more like a collection of items in someone's home, but this new location offers more breathing room and a more polished, better-organized tour through life in Czechoslovakia under the oppressive regime.
 |
| No, I didn't fail to rotate my photo. This ŠtB interrogation room is displayed sideways for dramatic effect. |
Terezia and I were thrilled that we got to see Prague again, even if it wasn't under the most ideal circumstances (I personally think winter is the best time to visit Prague). Simon now thinks it's the coolest city he's ever been to. Prague is, of course, much more commercial and crowded than it was in the 90s, when Terezia's mom last visited the place. But she appreciated getting to see it again, and she remarked that she never really traveled this way before in her life (i.e., just visiting a city, walking around and seeing the sites, eating out, staying in a hotel for a few nights, etc.).
She also said that this was the first time she got to see and ride the underground metro, which we took a couple of times. The metro was a point of contention in the Slovak half of the country back in the 70s and 80s, when it was being built, because it took years to build and cost a massive amount of money. Slovaks would complain that all their taxes were going into a metro that most of them would never ride.
Compared to, say, the Paris Metro, the Prague metro system, while quite popular with high commuter ridership, is far less extensive. It's better for traveling long distances across town, while trams and buses are better for getting around to closer points within the city. The metro was also built very deep underground so that it could double as a nuclear fallout shelter. The steep, long escalators plunge deep underground.
Liptov Region: Demänovská Dolina
We did end up going on a short trip with Tony and his family, though it was downgraded from the original plan. First, there was talk of another trip to the Croatian coast, like the one we did in 2024. That changed to talk of going to an area along the Italian coast just north of Venice, since apparently Croatia's peak summer tourism prices have now surpassed those of Italy (!). Then things were downgraded to a shorter stay at a hotel adjacent to a large water park (with lots of giant water slides) near the High Tatra mountains, but when that facility was already fully booked, Tony nabbed two apartment-style rooms at a small "resort" that lies right at the entrance to the lush, beautiful Demänovská Dolina, or Demänovská valley.
Demänovská sits just south of Liptovský Mikuláš, a mid-sized town which itself lies in a large valley/basin between the High Tatras to the north and the Small Tatras to the south. Liptovský Mikuláš is a pretty modernized, boring town, but the area is known as a popular base for a variety of outdoor activities in the adjacent mountain ranges.
The drive there, which took about an hour and a half, took us through gorgeous, winding, steep mountain roads and dense, lush forests. The road basically starts in Terezia's home town of Hriňová, then winds its way north through the town of Brezno, then goes through the beautiful mountainous terrain and forests of the southeastern corner of the Žilina region, and into the valley where Liptovský Mikuláš lies.
Demänová "Resort"
The "resort" was fairly nice—at least the clean, modern rooms were—but the facility contains a giant, kind of ugly outdoor kids' "Fun Center," and since summer season was still a week away from opening, much of the "Fun Center," including the pool, was closed. There were some play structures that were open, as well as Simon's favorite, a "tubing" slide where you sit in this hardened inner tube and glide down a long, plastic slide. What sucked about it, though, is these kid things weren't included with the price of the hotel booking. For example, you had to pay five euros to "rent" an inner tube for a half hour for the tubing slide. So, the place was clearly milking its clientele for every cent.
The views of the Small Tatra mountains, which we enjoyed from our windows and balcony, were lovely.
In the photos above, you can see the pricier individual cabin rentals. We were staying in one of three larger (but still nice) three-story buildings with apartment-sized rooms.
Curiously, both of our apartments, which were directly across a hallway from each other, had a small pile of books on a shelf in the "living room" area, and in both apartments was the same big, brand new, untouched book by L. Ron Hubbard, which made us wonder if the people who run this place are wacko Scientologists.
The were a few restaurants on the premises, as well as a bakery, a bike rental shop, and a "wellness" center. The main restaurant is called Pinus Restaurant (yes, pronounced "peenoose"), and the immature 12-year-old that still exists in me found this to be hilarious, and Simon got a huge kick out of it as well. Silvia kept trying in vain to remind us that "pinus" refers to a coniferous pine, but we kept telling her we already knew that but it was still funny to say we're going to the "Pinus restaurant." I mean, c'mon, there is no way you could ever use this as a restaurant name in a predominantly English-speaking country.
The restaurant's food was high-end aspirational and generally pretty good. We ordered and shared a bunch of dishes, including a great lamb shoulder, which came over a creamy, tasty bed of barley. The first night, the lamb was super tender and flavorful. The second night, when we ordered it again, one of the pieces of lamb was as stringy as a clump of twine. Their Bryndzové halušky, a classic Slovak staple, was really good.
The first full day there was pretty uneventful. Big rain storms were in the forecast, and whether we gazed south to the Small Tatras or north to the High Tatras, both mountain ranges were completely obscured by dark, blurry (i.e., it was full-on raining), foreboding clouds, while we could hear lots of thunder rumbling around us in the distance.
It wasn't raining in the valley, however, so we all drove to Liptovská Mara, a very large reservoir, which, despite sitting between a few gorgeous mountain ranges, has very little to offer in the way of picturesque scenery or interesting beaches or shores. We went to this one beach area along the northern shore which was surrounded by campgrounds, mobile cabins, and even some small motels, but the shore itself was just kind of boring, grass-covered, with a relatively small area roped off for swimming. A group of about a dozen teens arrived at one point, and stripped down to their swimming attire while drinking cheap wine directly from the bottle. We hung out here for a bit, despite not coming equipped with swimming gear, and I peed on an abandoned, run-down, bird shit-encrusted snack shack.
After deciding to leave, we stopped, at the kids' insistence, by a popular tourist trap, which is a full-sized upside down two-story house, which sits behind a small pub and alongside an old disused helicopter and small airplane that kids can go in and pretend to fly. Because the house is not only upside down (with all furniture mounted upside down to the floor or "ceiling"), but also at a slight angle, the effect inside was a bit disorienting.
For the rest of the afternoon, we piddled around the hotel/resort premises, leisurely consuming wine and/or beer, playing ping pong, and seeking shelter—from random short rain storms passing through—in a large canvas-covered structure called "The Palladium," which had another ping pong table, a pool table, plus non-functioning foosball and air hockey tables, several empty vending machines, a large performance stage with a robust PA and lighting system (all plugged into a messy tangle of power strips), and cushy, dated seating all around the edge of the room.
The other patrons consisted mostly of young parents with toddlers or infants, and the occasional older retirement-age couple.
Demänovská Ice Cave and Chopok Mountain
The second day had much better weather in the forecast and was far more eventful.
First on the agenda was the popular Demänovská ľadová jaskyňa, or Demänovská Ice Cave, which, sadly, is currently no longer an ice cave.
To reach the cave, after driving into the gorgeous Demänovská valley/forest, you first navigate a confusing and bizarre parking situation in front of a small hotel, after which you find the trailhead that leads to the cave entrance. You take the steep trail (about a 10-minute walk with kids) up through the densely forested and rocky terrain. Once there, you buy your tickets and wait for the next tour (I believe they begin at the start of each hour).
Of course, as we were waiting, a huge herd of noisy kids (it looked like two classrooms' worth of fifth graders), clamored up the hill, presumably on an end-of-school-year field trip, so this would unfortunately be a large group.
Once we were let in, we plunged down a long flight of metal stairs that twisted and turned until we reached a smoothed-out foot path on the cave's floor. The temperatures plummeted to just a hair above freezing, which, with the increasingly hot summer weather outside, felt glorious! The path snaked around for a good distance, before winding us back to an exit that was close to the entrance. The whole tour lasted about 45 minutes. The tour guide spoke in Slovak, of course, but Terezia translated key points to me and Simon.
This cave (or rather, the vast interconnected network of caves in these mountains) is believed to have been created by an underground river, or rather, a branch of the Demänovka river that flowed under/into the mountain.
For centuries, sections of the cave contained these majestic "lakes" of solid ice, which was part of the site's draw. But climate change and several consecutive warm winters have now completely melted all of the ice. The tour guide joked that they had to remove the word "ice" from the cave's name in their promotional materials. He also said that if they were to have three consecutive winters that were as cold as the winters there used to be, that would likely be enough to bring the ice back, but that just hasn't happened yet.
 |
| This picture shows the tour guide standing where the largest "lake" of ice used to be. |
They also had on display a couple of bear skeletons. One, which was fully intact and positioned on all fours, was that of a "cave" bear. The cave bears were a particular type of bear that dwelt in these caves. Most of the caves are pitch black inside (which the tour guide demonstrated to us in one area by turning off all the lights with a remote switch), and the cave bears would navigate the caves by the scent of their waste. Prior to the 17th century, explorers actually believed these cave bear skeletons were from dragons. Another bear skeleton, which was spread out flat on the ground, was that of a different type of non-cave-dwelling bear. They believe this bear may have gotten swept up in the river outside the mountain and brought in by the rapids, because it was not a type of bear that was known to dwell in caves.
The cave also featured some impressive stalagmites and stalactites, though some of them have turned to a sooty grey color from centuries of people using torches and oil lamps to light the caves until the 1920s. Climate change has also slowed or stopped their creation/continued growth.
 |
| This huge stalagmite was the biggest one in the cave. It has stopped growing, however, due to climate change. |
 |
| This is the graffiti wall, where explorers from centuries ago marked their names. |
Once outside the cave, we drove deeper south into the dense forest of the narrow, steep Demänovka valley toward the northern side of Chopok mountain, the third highest peak of the Small Tatra mountains, which sit right in the middle of the country. At the entrance to this area, you can either begin a long and steep hike up the northern side of the mountain, or do what we did and pay an exorbitant fee to take the cable gondola straight up to the mountain's summit.
Terezia and I hiked around this area once before with Tony and Silvia back in 2014. But on that occasion, we hiked up the southern side of the adjacent Ďumbier mountain (the highest Low Tatra peak) and crossed over to Chopok, before taking the gondola back down to where we parked. The views are spectacular (especially when the skies are clear), and the rock-strewn trails are pretty popular.
Once back down at the entrance to the park, there are several small hotels and pubs dotting the area. We had lunch at a restaurant called Happy Ending that was just several steps away from the gondola station. At this point, having now eaten at both Pinus Restaurant and Happy Ending, we were starting to wonder if there were any eating establishments in the area that didn't have sexual connotations in their name.
We piddled around the resort for the remainder of the afternoon, and had dinner in Tony and Silvia's room. We left the next morning.
Escaping the Unbearable Late-June Heatwave at Dolná Strehová
A terrible heatwave had taken hold across Europe by the time we got back from Liptov (late June), which continued to worsen for the rest of our stay in Slovakia. By the end of our trip, temperatures were lingering in the lower 100s Fahrenheit, peaking at 105. That meant going to Dolná Strehová on Thursday, Friday, and Monday, the swimming complex that's about a 20-minute drive south from Podrečany, which I've written about before. Simon loves this place because of the water slides. He pretty much spends the entire time going up and down these slides, while Terezia and I go back and forth between one of the large regular pools and the small, relaxing thermal pool filled mostly with the over-65 crowd.
With this punishing heat and suffocating humidity, it was difficult to do anything in the last several days of our trip. This was okay, however, as on Thursday, the day after we returned from the Liptov region, I started showing signs of a cold, which by Saturday had evolved into a full-blown chest cough. Readers may recall I managed to avoid getting sick on our last four Slovakia trips, but that I got a nasty weeks-long chest cough in the middle of our Slovakia trip in the fall of 2019. That was a miserable experience, and I dreaded having a repeat of it. But once that area around the entrance to my lungs gets inflamed and irritated, the coughing can go on for weeks.
Overall, this was a good trip, though a lot of rain (and a busy time at work) limited what we could do at times during the first two weeks, and that brutal heat that lasted throughout the final week of our stay also prevented us from doing several things. I wish we didn't always have to go in summer, when both heavy storms and increasingly severe and prolonged heatwaves can really derail your plans, but we are beholden to the schedule of the US public school system for now, so we have no choice.
See all the photos from this trip here.
