croatia 2018: zagreb

St. Mark's Church

This year, H and I (mostly I since it was my turn to pick our destination, although H will disagree) decided to visit Croatia! I had a very difficult time deciding where to visit, with a close contender being Iceland. However, Croatia was an appealing option for many reasons. Most importantly, we have a limited time frame which for me means a maximum of 5 weekdays off, for a total of 9 days of travel time. Picking an international destination for this period of time of course means factoring atleast a total of 2 days to actually get to and from the destination. After visiting Japan last year and realizing that 7 days in a foreign country would almost never be enough time, I set out to find a more manageable trip that could also been just a week long. Additional benefits were the price point, good weather, not really knowing anything about the culture (positive for me since it's a chance to learn), and a good mix of natural beauty/outdoorsy things, which is what I prefer, and historical things, what is what H prefers.

The trip itself was an especially exhausting one partly due to my lack of complete planning, and partly because of coming down with a sinus infection while on the trip. Other highlights included us realizing we could accidentally burn out our breaks if we didn't drive properly with a manual (thank you to the friends who told us about that) and H learning how to drive a manual while on a mountain, a freakish thunderstorm on our drive to Dubrovnik, and a mysterious rash H came down with. I will be dividing our Croatia posts up by city and in chronological order, starting with the city we flew in and out of, Zagreb!

Fresh flowers in downtown Zagreb

We flew into Zagreb late Sunday night, only leaving time for getting the rental car and driving to our lodging (Swanky Mint hostel) in the middle of Zagreb. We showered and immediately passed out, with the unfortunate realization just prior to sleeping that we forgot our outlet converters and couldn't charge our phones. The next morning, we got the outlet converters and decided to wander the city using just the map that our lodging had provided for us since our phones were still dead.

The first stop was the Museum of Broken Relationships, which was a quick and quirky stop. While the museum first started here, I later found out there is also a branch in Los Angeles in case you're interested in visiting this place, but not enough to fly to Croatia for it. The museum itself is exactly what you think it's about- failed love relationships and items symbolic of these relationships along with the stories. 

The cafe inside the museum

One way to pet a dog

After the museum, we wandered around the area a little more before heading to a few more sights we wanted to catch on our map. Overall, we spent around a total of ~7 hours walking around Zagreb and seeing most of the monuments. While researching things to do in each city, Zagreb was the place where I had found the least for us to do, but after walking the city, we realized there was a lot more here than we originally thought and was totally worth spending the day here for. We had set a deadline of leaving the city by 6pm because we would be staying in the Plitvice Lakes area for the night, which was about a 2.5 hour drive from Zagreb.

Outside of the Croatian Naive Art Gallery

A familiar sight in the foreground

A souvenir stall in the Dolac Market

One of my favorite stops was the Zagreb Cathedral, the tallest building in Croatia. The gothic architecture was absolutely gorgeous, and my attempt to enhance the photos below really ruined the beauty, so I kept them as is. The first of many waves of construction/reconstruction was completed in 1217.

The organ inside the cathedral

The view upon entering the cathedral

The view from the back of the outside of the cathedral

After the Zagreb Cathedral, we continued our walk when I noticed a botanical garden listed on the map and, of course, had to stop by. On our way, we stopped by the Music Pavilion in Zrinjevac (pictured above) to catch our breath and enjoy the weather. Unfortunately, the botanical garden was closed on Mondays, so we continued to find other things to do in the city.

Croatian National Theatre 

A statue of Nikola Tesla

We grabbed a quick late lunch in the afternoon before heading to the Croatian History Museum. Another benefit of the city was the relatively small size of the museums, both the Museum of Broken Relationships and the history museum. Both museums were easy to go through completely within an hour.

Walking to the rental car

By the end of the history museum, we decided to call it day and head back to the car. We grabbed two cappuccinos and hit the road to our lodging near Plitvice Lakes located in central Croatia, which was about a 2.5 hour drive. We ended the day with beautiful views and a colorful sunset on the drive there, with the plan to rest up as much as possible for the next day of walking at Plitvice Lakes National Park- the day that I had been looking forward to the most!

The Croatian countryside

Sunset over the roads to Plitvice Lakes

Stay tuned for my next post on our day in Plitvice Lakes National Park!