The Tatras Mountains
Trip Start
Jun 10, 2011
1
2
7
Trip End
Jul 17, 2011
Where I stayed
Penzion Vesna, Novy Smokovec, Vysoke Tatry
Novy Smokovec, Presov, Slovakia
Monday, June 13, 2011
I’ve done my briefing in Budapest and then taken the group out for dinner. We went to my favourite restaurant in Budapest, Menza. There is something about this restaurant. The 70′s retro deco does it all for me. Also the attention to the service, the nice food and the good-looking waiters help to make it the place for a really good night out. I normally get praised for this choice but not this time. There is a mixture of service and quality of food that I think has gone down a bit since my last visit. On the other hand prices have gone down too. Still good enough for me. The next day Yury, the minibus driver from Novy Smokovec, was waiting for us at 11am. He is also the owner of an excellent Slovakian specialities restaurant in Novy. He drove us smoothly through the Slovakian countryside for about 4 hours. When we arrive at Penzion Vesna, 
the best B&B in the world, Tony’s group of 16 was there waiting for us. Tony was happy to see me and once I briefed my group on all the attractions of the Tatras and taken them for an orientation walk, I gave myself a free afternoon. I sipped a few Brandies with Stano, the landlord, and waved goodbye to Jela, the landlady. She was off to Croatia with her girlfriends for a week in the sun. That evening after dinner at the pizzeria “La Montanara”, the best pizza in Central Europe, we gathered at the top floor of Vesna for a game of “Uno” and a few more drinks. The next day while Tony’s group left to Budapest, my group adventured up in the highs of the Tatras’ hikes. I stayed in trying to catch up with work.I had so much to do in terms of making sure that my trip worked in reverse as well as it used to the normal way. Nothing seemed to be that easy and that’s why the whole day wasn’t enough to sort everything out. Instead of going with the group for my usual hike, I had to sacrifice also the second day at Vesna to make sure that everything about this new tour had been taken care of.
On the night our third day in Novy we left the lovely mountains and headed to Prague on a night train.
