Zagreb

Day 474 (October 15, 2020) – Zagreb, Croatia

Agh, why did we leave the coast? was our first thought on arriving in Zagreb. We had taken the train from Split. It was a very modern train, only two carriages long, but it traveled at a decent clip to cover the 250-mile distance. This trip from Slit to Zagreb was the Croatian equivalent of going from sunny southern California to the gray and dreary Northeast. It was cold here. We had to dig out more layers from our bag to keep us warm on the walk from the train station to our Airbnb apartment. This was also the very first apartment of our entire trip that had heating and that we felt a need to use. This isn't, of course, considering all the times we didn't have heating and would have really appreciated it. We had a good time in Zagreb, but I kept thinking while we were there, we could have been at the beach right now…

Leaving Croatia's Adriatic coast by train.

Zagreb felt very European. The architecture was reminiscent of other cities we had been to. We also got a few good laughs from Zagreb’s (and really all of Europe’s) love for al fresco dining. This made perfect sense earlier in our trip when it was summer and beautiful. Well, it was very cold now, yet everyone still eats outside. We got bundled up in all our jackets and did the same. Our first dinner there was at a curry restaurant which was quite good. When we did eat outside, we tried to grab tables by the heat lamps, but usually the outdoor seating was so crowded that you just got whatever table was open.

First impressions of Zagreb. Notice all the jackets people are wearing! We were in t-shirts the day before.

Giant bowls of curry for dinner one night. Outdoor seating, of course. 

We are pretty cheap travelers, as you might imagine with us trying to stick to our budget, but occasionally we want to a nice night out. A nice night out for us means springing for a mid-priced restaurant, most likely followed by a visit to a pub for a couple after dinner drinks. We went to a highly rated Italian restaurant right in the downtown area of Zagreb, but it was only ok. Kind of a disappointment, actually. After eating out at so many different restaurants, I think we have both concluded that our best meals rarely come from expensive restaurants. We don’t get anything out of the fine dining experience. We only have so many clothes so there is no such thing as dressing up for an occasion. We’re left with a strict evaluation of the food, and just because we had paid more for something was never an indication that it was going to taste any better. At any rate, we made up for our mediocre but expensive meal by spending even more money at some of Zagreb’s brewpubs. There are a few pedestrian streets in town packed with restaurants and bars and we made a little pub crawl out of it, trying to hit up all the craft beer bars. At most of them we were sitting outdoors, huddled up under the heat lamps to keep warm, but it was a good time.

We took our grand walking tour of Zagreb on a Monday. We started out from our apartment and walked all over the city to hit the highlights. We walked through parks, busy downtown streets, visited the Cathedral of Zagreb, hiked up the huge hill in town to visit the colorfully tiled roof of St. Mark’s Church, and then back down the hill and through it using a very long underground tunnel that cuts right underneath the hill. Overall, Zagreb was a nice place. There seemed to be a lot going on, and it was a very manageable city to explore on foot. For dinner that night we went out for štrukli, a Croatian dish made from pastry and cheese. It’s sort of like a very rich, creamy, and cheesy lasagna. This was delicious, and way tastier and cheaper than our fancy Italian dinner a couple nights prior.

Outside the Cathedral of Zagreb, partially under construction.

St. Mark's Church.

We also took care of a random list of tasks on our to-do list. I managed to get a haircut, after walking halfway across the city to find a place that took walk ins and was not overly expensive. It was actually one of my better haircuts of the trip, even though I don’t think the hairdresser and I understood a word that either of us was trying to say to one another. We also made some changes to our cruise reservation and upgraded ourselves to a room with a floor-to-ceiling window. We had previously booked an interior room because it was the cheapest. The upgrade wasn’t that much more, as it was so close to the departure date. We would be very thankful that we did that in a few weeks’ time. We also went shopping for some button-down shirts. We both felt like we should have something slightly more presentable to wear if we were going to be having fancy meals on a cruise ship. We found a secondhand store and tried on their whole rack of shirts to find ones that suitably fit. Our timing was perfect. Right in the middle of trying to find something the shopkeeper ran around the store hanging these signs everywhere. As it turns out, they were advertising something like a store happy hour, so anything purchased within that hour was half off. In the end, we got our shirts and they only cost half as much as we were expecting. That was a shopping win right there.

This seemingly endless pedestrian tunnel cuts right through a giant hill in the middle of Zagreb.

Štrukli for dinner one night. It's as creamy and delicious as it looks. And also burns your mouth off on the first bite.

We will also remember all the cake we had in Zagreb. There was a bakery on the way back from downtown heading home to our apartment. So every time we were downtown for dinner we would stop at this bakery to pick up a slice of cake. This bakery was packed all hours of the day and night, so we had to try it. There was always a line. All the dozens of cakes looked delectable, but they were definitely not like an American cake. They didn’t have anything near the sweetness one might expect. We tried so many of them, and some were better than others, but they were almost an acquired taste. Rather than satiating our desire for cake it just gave us a craving for something sweeter. Our next stop was in Slovenia, so perhaps we would find something more satisfying there.