Bratislava is a capital that you can see across in a glance. The Danube flows past a hill topped by a white, four-towered castle that locals say looks like an upturned table, and the old town lies at its foot, compact and cobbled, a few minutes' walk from the river. Austria is just across the water, and Vienna is only an hour away, which means the city lives under the shadow of a bigger neighbour and has learned to enjoy its own pace.
From 1536 to 1783 the city, then called Pressburg or Pozsony, was the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary, when Buda was under Ottoman rule, and from 1563 to 1830 Hungarian kings were crowned in Saint Martin's Cathedral, whose spire carries a replica of the crown. Germans, Hungarians and Slovaks lived side by side here for centuries, and the street names and the cuisine still carry traces of all three. The blue-painted Art Nouveau church and the peculiar flying-saucer bridge, built in communist times, are other landmarks.
For riders, the city is a place to cross rather than explore, since traffic along the Danube and on the ring roads is heavy. But north-west lie the Little Carpathians, a ridge of forested hills clothed in vineyards, with a wine route linking small villages like Pezinok and Modra. The roads curl gently through the vines and orchards and are best on a weekday morning. To the east, at Devín, the ruins of an ancient castle stand at the confluence of the Danube and the Morava, right on the old Iron Curtain line.
Slovakia uses an electronic vignette on motorways, which must be bought before you use them, and it is wise to check this at the border. Fuel is plentiful and generally cheaper than in Austria, so riders from Vienna often cross the bridge just to fill up.
Late spring and autumn are the best seasons, when the vineyards are green or golden and the new wine called burčiak appears in the cellars.