Our fourth country on our journey (yes, we're counting the Vatican!) was Croatia. Instead of heading straight for the sea, we elected to go inland first starting at the capital, Zagreb. The capital city is home to about 800,000 residents and unlike the U.S., there are not a lot of tall sky scrapers. We arrived by bus and jumped on a tram to head to our place which was 15 mins west of Old Town. The trams were pretty slick, just load up on a bunch of one way paper tickets and punch them on the tram to activate them and you were set to travel around the city. On our first day, we did a free walking tour around the Old Town to learn about Croatia and Zagreb's history. We spent most of our time in "Old" Zagreb, but the city has expanded to the south into "New" Zagreb. It was interesting hearing more about how the war in the 90s impacted Croatia, since it was much longer and more brutal than what Slovenia faced. Our tour guide was pretty young, and she mentioned that she is dating someone from Serbia and her dad doesn't approve. So, while things have moved on in some ways, there are obviously still some wounds that haven't healed for many people.
We mostly spent time in Zagreb relaxing and wandering, and it was a good city to do that. The main attraction we did was visiting The Museum of Broken Relationships, which is one of Zagreb's biggest tourist attractions. This tiny museum was founded in the early 2000s by two Zagreb-based artists, after their four year relationship ended. They came up with the idea to set up a museum to house left-over personal items. From there, the museum was born, and the collection includes thousands of donated items from failed relationships. Only a certain number are on display in the museum, but they came from all over the world and covered all types of relationships (not just romantic love). Each item in the museum is accompanied by a description of where the item was from, how long the relationship lasted, and a descriptions written by the donator. Some of them were really funny, but many were heartbreaking. Yes, we both cried! But it was a really beautiful museum, and worth going to. It reminded Mel of the "Notes from a Public Typewriter" book she has from Literati, her favorite bookstore in Ann Arbor (it's one of our coffee table books, if you ever want to read it!).
After the museum, we were in our feels and wanted a beer, so we found a Lord of the Rings themed bar nearby. It was a fun vibe, but the best part was meeting a new friend Henrich, from Slovakia. We ended up talking to him for about an hour about everything from our travels, his violin playing, politics (of both our countries), and how beer counts as lunch if you're short on cash :).
All in all, we don't have a ton to say about Zagreb. We liked it as a stop, and it was a good place to relax, and it seems like it would be a nice place to live, but it doesn't necessarily have the draw or the magic that other cities we've been to have if you're just going on vacation.
From Zagreb we took a local bus to Plitvice Lakes National Park. The ride took about 2.5 hours and we stopped at a small bus stop just south of the two main park entrances. This stop was not on any schedule and we found it at the local bus station in Zagreb. We stayed at a small guesthouse on the edge of town up against the woods. The setting kind of reminded us of Hayward, WI. The town has a total of two restaurants, so we chose the easy/cheap options (pizza). Unfortunately, we're pretty sure it gave us food poisoning. So much so that Melissa was unable to go on the hike the next day in the National Park. Carson had some stomach issues in Italy, so he must have had more immunity. Melissa was left to her misery (nonexistent wifi and cell service, so she basically slept/read/watched MTV music videos all day) and Carson walked to the park and got in line for the "H" hike at 7:30am. The bus took a while to arrive for the ride to the top portion of the park, but at 8:30, he was at the trailhead and started the H hike. Getting there early, he had many viewpoints to himself. The top view point reminded Carson of northern Minnesota with the rolling hills, green forests, and blue lakes. Hiking down to the lower lakes portions, you walk on a board walk and are able to see how the lakes are layered with each lake cascading into the next one. The lakes cascaded into each other from waterfalls or through rock and the water gets filtered and more clear. In the middle of the hike, Carson took a boat across one of the lakes and the water was extremely blue, There were more tall waterfalls in the lower lakes section, but the best views were up high overlooking the lakes below. Overall the park was beautiful and being up close to cascading lakes was unique to see. Ultimately, he wasn't blown away since Oregon had spoiled him and he had seen similar water colors and waterfalls. Also, the cost to get into the park is steep at 40 euros per person and you have to choose a time slot to get in (we got lucky with the early time slot). If we were to go back, we would go during the spring when there would be less people and more water for the waterfalls...and we wouldn't eat the pizza.
Comments
Post a Comment