Zagreb - Our Croatian adventure begins
Trip dates: February 28, 2017 - March 1, 2017
We took an afternoon train from Ljubljana into Zagreb to kick off our Croatian journey. In total, we’d be spending 2 weeks traveling through Croatia and two neighboring countries!
As a bit of background, Lishan has really wanted to visit Croatia since pictures from Plitvice National Park started cropping up a few years ago. Tons of waterfalls, green and picturesque landscapes, much of the country bordering the Adriatic Sea - check check check, let’s go! Since it had been built up from all of her research and from talking with friends who had already been, we really hoped it would meet our very high expectations.
Trains aren’t as much of a transport option within Croatia, so we chose to start our time in Zagreb, rent a car and drive south, ultimately ending up in Dubrovnik. More on rental cars later on!
We arrived in Zagreb right around sunset, so we got settled in at the hotel and then headed back out to explore. Zagreb is not as much of a ‘tourist’ city, but still has lots of museums and sights (well, the city wants you to go look at stuff). We explored the area primarily around Ban Jelačić Square before walking up to see the Stone Gate and Upper Town. There was also some big event going on in the main square with live music, people dancing in the square, lots of vendors. It was kind of fun to see even if we didn’t understand a word that was being said!
One of the things Lishan wanted to check out was the Museum of Broken Relationships. It’s a newer exhibit that was started a few years ago and showcases the fragments/pieces/memories of relationships that are no more, from significant others or even parents, and showcases how those feelings are the same among everyone. The exhibits are constantly changing but we took some pics of our favorites. The museum is definitely a unique one, and a pretty fun and interesting way to spend an hour or two in Zagreb.
For dinner, we ate at a Balkan grill called Batak Grill. There was a special appetizer that we couldn’t pronounce, so of course we ordered it. It was like a bruschetta but with a meat paste instead of tomatoes on top - it was quite good! We also had our first taste of kajmak sauce (pronounced kay-mach), which is a creamy cheese sauce, with pork. This is a sauce that’s popular in the region and we’d see it crop up from time to time over the next few weeks.
We only stayed in Zagreb for the one night and were starting our rental car the next day. On the way out, we just had time for lunch before getting the car! We stopped by a small restaurant near the hotel to grab a bite.
Choosing a rental car was an interesting challenge because we planned to visit Bosnia & Herzegovina and Montenegro as well. In order to do so, the rental car company needs to provide you a valid ‘green card’ that’s stamped to allow for cross-border travel. Many of the bigger car rental companies charge you a fee of 50-70 euros for the green card, but many people claim this is just a money grab and there’s nothing particularly required about this. Ultimately, I ended up going with a local Croatian car rental company (Nova) as they included cross-border without any additional payments, though we did have to pay a one-way rental fee instead. The rate was good for a small automatic (man, should have brushed up on manual driving before coming on this trip!) and the people we interacted with at the company were all great, so I’m happy we went with Nova.
We got our rental car and we were off! Croatian drivers in general were nothing too crazy. I had read that they can be super aggressive so you need to be extra cautious. On the very first day of driving, I almost got in a head-on collision with someone who overtook another car blindly on a curve, but luckily, I had a split second to dodge to the side and hit the brakes. Good wake up call when driving, but wouldn't recommend it! Luckily, we didn’t have any other close calls after this and the Croatian drivers weren’t so bad once you got used to their aggressiveness.
We headed from Zagreb to a hotel near Plitvice National Park and along the way passed by this pretty town called Rastoke that is situated on top of some waterfalls. Rastoke used to be a mill town or something and there are still people who live in this super scenic little town that’s sitting on the water. We stopped by to take some pictures at the same time that a tour bus filled with Asian tourists had disgorged its cargo and were wandering around everywhere. This was the first of many Asian tour buses we would see while in Croatia, which was crazy because it’s definitely off season for Croatia.
After we checked in to our hotel, we popped over to Stari grad Drežnik, which is the ruins of an old fort that was a few km away from our hotel. It was a good time to have a photoshoot with Fi (pronounced fee), our Ford Fiesta rental, and take pictures in the fort with no one around.
Most everything around us was shut down for the season still, so we opted to eat dinner at the restaurant that was owned by our hotel. They are known for their trout, so we had some trout fillet in addition to pasta for Lishan. The trout was really good, everything else was just decent. But what we learned is that half the battle in Croatia was finding out what’s open and going with the flow, so all in all it was just fine and dandy.
We got up bright and early the next morning to check out the waterfalls at Plitvice. Did it live up to Lishan’s expectations??
