The Haircut, Traditional Meal and Other Adventures on a Day Trip to Zagreb, Croatia
Zagreb is one of those odd travel cities on my itinerary…it was on it, then it wasnt and then all of a sudden, it was again…for ten hours.
Charlie and I took the train (made it with 10 minutes to spare! Whew! Maybe next time I wont spend so long at the computer….whoops) to Zagreb this morning. We schlepped our stuff to the bus station a kilometer down the road and took off to see the sites of Zagreb.
The problem was, there was not much to see.
We found the cool market, the Cathedral with a laid out body of a long dead martyr…or someone important…and an excellent place to eat at the suggestion of the tourism office with traditional Croatian food, called Hansel and Gretal.
The problem is, when there is not much to do, I do one thing…eat. And eat we did. We started off with an appetizer platter that had a variety of meats, yoghurt like milk, cottage cheese (full fat!) with sour cream, cornbread, dense wheat bread, bread fried in lard and spreadable cheese.
And, of course, then came our entrees…Charlie had dumpling like things fried in breadcrumbs, while I had a dish of pyllo dough, spinach and slightly sweet cheese. It was fantastic, but for anyone heading here, believe me…the starter is more than enough.
We chatted briefly to the couple next to us…he was from India, she was from Croatia and they lived in California with a daughter who just moved from, of all places, Ashland, Oregon. He half-offered us their apartment an hour north of Split, a second home they were not using, but she did not seem too pleased at that idea. Still, it was nice to think they considered it.
After rolling out of the restaurant, we roamed the city, eventually grabbing ice cream from THE dessert place in Zagreb…I will search out the name later, but it is at 19 Illiac St. and everyone goes there.
We also dropped off my pictures to be added to a disk, and when we asked about a barber nearby, the woman lead us out the door and down the street to this hidden courtyard with a shop we would have surely missed. Charlie now has that Euro spike look going on…I do not know how long he will be able to stand it, but I love it! Now we are killing a few hours at an internet cafe called, amusingly, Charlies.
There have been refreshingly few tourists in Zagreb…it really is a city where the heart belongs to the people that live there…unlike, say, Venice, or even the striking Tallinn. If the museums had been open, it would have been perfect for a day trip and, indeed, many people do visit from their vacation in Ljubljana.
Next stop, Sarajevo!
And on a totally random side note….GO TWINKIES!!!
Tags: Croatia
“He half-offered us their apartment an hour north of Split, a second home they were not using, but she did not seem too pleased at that idea.”
You should have TOTALLY done it. Fuck her.
I’m with Shabba. Never let sensitivity to other people’s discomfort get in the way of free accommodation…
[...] Since I’m currently on about Croatia – and, to pre-empt my next post, which will likely feature the highly esteemed traveller’s practice of bludging accommodation – here’s a link to a failed attempt at doing so. A note to Girl Travels World: you should have been more forceful. Never let your well-brought-up sensibilities get in the way of free accommodation… Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]