Day 13 - Exploring Zagreb

Today we woke up and the plan was to explore the city! Sadly, Auke was feeling sick so he stayed in bed.

Ali wasn’t sure what to do - we didn’t have any internet on our phones as Spark doesn’t have roaming plans with Croatia, so the only internet we had was wi-fi at our apartment. We also didn’t have any calling or messaging set up on our phones as we had just been using What’s App when we were home in the evenings. This was a big problem because as we had just arrived in Zagreb the night before, we had no food and someone had to go out and buy some!

Ali had to bite the bullet and try to explore the city on her own with a phone that had no calling or messaging, no internet and no map, to find a supermarket and get some food!

Ali didn’t want to go too far from home in case she got lost, so she set out in search of a supermarket. After about 15 minutes she managed to find one and bought some food. She even managed to navigate her way back home. Once home, she made lunch for everyone and thankfully Auke was feeling a bit better.

Even though it was a late start, we still went out as this was one of the only days we had to explore Zagreb. We were so glad we did! Auke says Zagreb is ‘the coolest city’ and we absolutely loved it!

It’s so unlike the other cities we had been too. It’s pretty, not busy, and it is fun to explore. The first thing we did was head to the 360 degree observation tower.

On the way there we came across a shop called Lana - much to Lana’s delight! Of course we had to stop and take a photo.

We then reached the 360 degree observation tower. This is something we were meant to see the night before but we ran out of time. It turns out it’s not much of a tower at all. Rather, it is just the top story of a tall building and due to safety laws, they have to put bars up all around. This means you can’t actually take a photo of yourself with the views, but you can definitely capture views with your camera. It looked amazing up there and it was fun to be able to see the whole city.

We headed along towards some markets where we bought our fridge magnet souvenir, and some fresh peaches to munch on.

After this we came across Zagreb Cathedral. We went inside for a short while, and then headed on to explore Upper Town and Lower Town. One of the things we really wanted to find is something called the Gric Tunnel - it was an old bomb shelter in WW2 used now as a pedestrian tunnel. We were very excited to find it!

We then found the Stone Gate - this is a gate which was used in medieval times to connected the two parts of the city. Later on it became famous because apparently a fire burnt everything down except for one picture in the stone gate.

Right near the stone gate is St Marks Church. We couldn’t go inside but the roof was pretty fascinating to look at!

Once we had seen all the sights we wanted to see, we explored the town and came across a street full of nearly any food you could imagine! There were also heaps of places offering cocktails. We stopped in at a place with a sign ‘Buy 3 cocktails and get 1 free’ and we got two each. This place was perfect as while we sipped our cocktails, the girls played in a park right next to us.

While we were on this street we saw not one, but two weddings! It’s ohviouslt a popular place for wedding photos!

After this, we headed out trying to figure out what to choose for dinner! The girls were very excited to find a build your own pancake places here they could choose any toppings they wanted. They both chose white chocolate and m&ms for their toppings and they had that for dinner.

Auke and I decided on Indian for dinner and order an Indian Chicken Curry and Chicken Tikka Masala. It was delicious! The waiter tried to tell Ali when she ordered it that she would end up crying if she chose hot, but it wasn’t too hot at all! No tears were shed.

There are also some other snaps from just general exploring around Zagreb. There are pretty gardens, heaps of fountains and lots of statues! We had fun imitating the statues (or at least trying to!). The girls also loved chasing the pigeons as they are everywhere! Also there is a picture of the girls eating the fruit that we got from a market - it was totally delicious!

We walked home and picked up some groceries on the way home for the next day.