Zagreb travel highlights
stayed: An air bnb at the end of a busy street. Not the best, but it had a bed and wifi. Good enough for this weary couple.
saw: Hotties strutting their stuff. I must say, I think Zagreb had the most attractive looking people. All of the women had beautiful, flowing dresses on and statement lipstick. This gal was jealous!
conquered: Leslie’s version of the Rick Steves walking tour. At this point, we’d spent a pretty penny on guided tours so I tore out this chapter in our book and took us on our own lil tour.
The Museum of Broken Relationships. We hadn’t planned on seeing too many museums on this trip but I’d heard of this one through the grapevine. The museum houses artifacts from people’s past relationships with their partners, family members, etc. along with their stories. It was a nice change to the typical art museum.
Renting and driving a car! It felt SO good to finally be on our own schedule and not dependent on buses or trains. I think it cost us $300 for the car rental, which was over 5 days. And yes, there were toll roads but zero traffic anywhere. Note to travelers: we used Sixt, which was good overall. They did not give us the paperwork at the beginning that you sign saying there’s this or that sort of damage so that you don’t get charged for it. They tried to charge us for a dent, but we talked our way out of it. Make sure you get that paperwork!
Plitvice Lakes. About a two hour drive south from Zagreb, these lakes are not to be missed! I’d say hiking around for the day was fairly easy. Most everything was flat and they had electric boats and a tram that took you to major drop points so you didn’t have to cover as much ground by foot. The worst part was hiking back up to the parking lot at the end of the day!
Cheese. Snacks were pretty much nonexistent on our trip and as we were leaving Zagreb, Adam joked about a drive-thru cheese shop. Little did we know that those DO exist (in the form of a roadside stand) and we picked up a delicious smoked sheep’s cheese wheel on the way to Plitvice.
other travel notes: Compared to the other places we visited in Croatia, Zagreb was the cheapest so take advantage of that. We had price shock in both Split and Dubrovnik. I think we paid less than $8 for dinner one night in Zagreb!
Rent a car and take the scenic roads. It was super easy to drive in both Croatia and Bosnia and the Plitvice Lakes were well marked with brown park signs. Croatia also had these killer tunnels that went through entire mountains. The “hold your breath” game would not work well here.
Also, how many phones and cameras are lost at the lakes each year? Slippery boardwalks + electronics seem like a potential disaster to me!
The cathedral was being renovated and I liked how they showed a run-down part of it next to a refurbished one. The detail is pretty spectacular!
The train from Slovenia to Croatia was only running until it reached the border so we had to depart the train in a random parking lot and were bused into Zagreb from there. The border crossing was a lot different than in previous days. Police were in full riot gear and had a car blockade. Just a little aggressive.
