The campground we are staying at is in a suburb of Zagreb about 11km’s from the city center. They run a free shuttle bus to the local train station, and from there it is about 15 minutes to the center. We were the only couple on the first shuttle of the day, and when we got to the station we were waiting in line to buy our tickets when a train pulled into the station. The Croatian ticket seller then yelled something in Croatian at a young lady in line and us. The young lady understood and bolted after the train, Ton and I looked confused so she said something else and pointed at the train, so we retreated to the platform, just to make sure we understood she came out of her office and gave us the hand signal to hurry up and pointed at the train. So we ran after the train and got on. At that point I went up to the young Croatian lady who was in line with us and asked if she spoke English, she did, fluently. She explained that the ticket seller was telling us to get on the train and pay there. I asked who we should pay, and she said that someone might come along to collect, and if they don’t the ride is free this morning. The ride turned out to be free.
Ton had mapped out a good agenda for us to take in Zagreb. One of the highlights she had on her list was the Museum of Broken Relationships. It started as kind of a joke, but now is one of the most popular museums in Zagreb. We visited the gift shop but I decided visiting the museum proper would be bad luck so we moved on to one of the churches on her list.
Usually October is shoulder season in Europe and then things start to shut down in November. In Croatia it looks like shoulder season ends on October 1st and we are officially now in off season for tourism. Both the cathedral and St. Marks Church had recently erected scaffolding and were closed to visitors as of today until next May. It also looks like a lot of the campgrounds are closed today until April, fortunately not all, but we will have a little less choice as we move around.
Today we spent a lot of the day enjoying the restaurant and cafe scene in Zagreb. In the morning we visited an excellent coffee shop with a great terrace overlooking a couple of the major tourist highlights of the city.
Our next stop was the bustling Dolac farmers market located in the middle of the city. The fruit and vegetable stands were located on the roof of the market, while the meat and fish stands were in the interior. The fruit and vegetable stands are all covered by red umbrellas which have become a symbol of the market. The story is that in the past all of the stands were covered by boring black umbrellas, but one day a young man confessed his love to his girl and gave her a kiss and all of the umbrellas turned from black to the red ones because of their love.
Our next stop was the cathedral, but as I said earlier it was closed. The highlight was watching two workmen hanging from a basket a couple of hundred feet in the air at the end of a crane.
Our first choice for lunch today was not open, but our second choice turned out to be a treat. The restaurant specialized in a Croatian dish called Strukli. It is baked cheese with dough and a filler. Ton had red peppers for her filler, and I had nuts and honey. It is a simple dish, but delicious and very interesting. We had never had anything quite like it. The closest dish we could come up with to it was Lasagna.
We then spent the next couple of hours wandering around looking at old buildings. Zagreb and Ljubljana both were interesting as the majority of the classic buildings were only from the 1800’s so the cities did not feel as old to us as other cities. It seems like when the Croatians and Slovenes have to rebuild buildings do to a war or natural disaster they are more comfortable rebuilding in the current style, then trying to recreate the older style that was there before the building came down. The French and Germans seem to try to recreate the buildings that were there.
We ended up putting about 9 miles on our old legs today, so when we returned to François for the night we decided to try the pizza restaurant attached to the campground. Even though we are in a small town, and it is Monday night the restaurant was doing pretty well when we turned up. When we received our pizza we knew why, it was excellent.
