Zagreb, Croatia !

Kelly and I poo-pooed the planned Oktoberfest trip due to bad timing and the fact that friends we were going to meet wouldnt be arriving in Munich til Sunday.

So to fill the weekend gap, we hopped on a train headed to Croatia !

The different train services are always....different, but we were pleased with the quality of the car for our 6 hour journey to Zagreb.

That is until the conductor informed us we were in 1st Class....damn.

So we went back to 2nd Class, or steerage as Kelly likes to call it, and found ourselves an empty compartment. During all the seat changing hub-bub, our headphones got all tangled...but we recovered nicely and soon were enjoying the views from the train as we headed south.

We arrived in Zagreb at 1:30pm, checked into our hotel, and headed straight for a local traditional Croatian restaurant.

I was so hungry that I forgot to take a picture of our meal which I like to do when possible. As you can tell from the picture, it was delicious ! Kelly had a Tomato salad, some Goulash soup and some local wine . I had Veal Medallions in a white wine based mushroom sauce with creamy mashed potatoes...and a local beer, of course.

Once our batteries were recharged, we headed through the town towards the Upper City, the oldest part of Zagreb.

Let me tell you...neither of us was prepared for Zagreb.

Whenever you hear about Croatia, its always about Dubrovnik, Split or somewhere on the coast.

Zagreb is beautiful !

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the break up of Yugoslavia, Croatia has boomed. It is an absolutely charming city, whoever was in charge of modernizing the city should get a big pat on the back for doing a fantastic job.

The city is small and clean with loads of green spaces. We instantly fell in love with Zagreb.

The Upper City is up a steep hill from the Lower City, so they have a funicular train option if you don't want to walk. (Kelly said the word funicular 300 times on this trip...more on that later)

The Old (Upper) City is even more charming then the Lower City ! How come noone has ever told us about Zagreb !

There are tons of outdoor cafe's and a couple of nice long pedestrian streets to stroll up and down. There are also cathedrals and such to check out of course.

As it was a Saturday, there were weddings going on.....we saw 6 !


I knew that Croatia is a hotspot for people to do destination weddings, but after seeing the Old city I understand why.


We spent the day exploring nooks and crannies, sitting at cafe's and walking around.



We had an absolutely wonderful day in Zagreb. We went back to the hotel, showered, took a nap and then headed out for more of the same at night (without the camera though)

We had a nice long meal at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the main pedestrian thoroughfare and then hopped from cafe' to cafe' sampling their local wines and laughing our butts off.

Thanks Zagreb, you are amazing.

Next stop....Ljubljana, Slovenia !