Oh, Slovakia!

There are a lot of cool travel blogs out there. That's not the purpose of this one.

But I have to say, one of the great things about living in Europe is being able to see places I would never visit otherwise. If I were in the States and wanted to travel to Europe, Paris, Rome and London would be on the list. But never Genova, Annecy or, as was the case last week, Slovakia.

We spent the week driving through Austria and Hungary. On the return trip I looked on the map and realized we could backtrack from Budapest to Vienna through Hungary, or we could swing up north through Slovakia, passing through Bratislava.

Slovakia has never been on my list of must-see countries. But that's kind of what made it must-see once we were so close to the border.

So for those of you who may never visit it, may I present southwestern Slovakia as seen from my car:

(Like you were really surprised southwestern Slovakia looks like this.)