Venturing to Zagreb

Entrance to the Kathedral in Zagreb.

Today was the earliest get up of the trip yet as the catamaran left at 7:30 so the alarms were ringing at 6.  Luckily the ferry is one hour later than usual so we did get an extra hour of sleep.  We hiked down the promenade for the last time into the town center to catch the boat.  It was another beautiful, peaceful morning in Bol for the walk to the ferry.  We had a little time to spare so Jenna and I went out to search for our morning Cafe Lattes.  We found a spot and had a seat to order our drinks, with the waiter speaking in broken English.  We’ve been working on our Croatian while here and so the automatic reply is Quala” (not spelt correctly but meaning “thank you”).  It was pretty early in the morning and with my highly developed brain in other languages, I replied back Panda when he brought our drinks.  I think Jenna thought that was pretty funny, so the ongoing joke all day has been “Panda” for thank you.

 

The landscape going into the interior of Croatia. Check out the highway and tunnels below.

  The ferry was a 50 minute venture to Split where we hiked over to the bus terminal to get the bus to Zagreb. We managed to catch the 9:30 so we really didn’t have much down time between dropping the bags and jumping onto the bus.  We would have liked to spend some time in Split as it looks like a pretty cool city and has a Unesco World Heritage Site right in its downtown core as part of the old walled city.  Guess that will have to be next time.

The drive into the interior was a bit monotonous as the landscape is dry and rocky with shrub brush (no trees) which kind of reminds me of the Kamloops area.  There is really nothing else until you catch a quick little glimpse of water or a super old building in a gully that flies by the bus window.  Water is obviously a pretty sacred resource around here as nothing is able to grow without it here and agriculture is pretty nonexistent.  

East of the first mountain range.  Finally trees!

As we got closer to Zagreb we passed our first small mountain range.  When looking at their highways in Europe it makes me realize how brain dead of a solution the area around Revelstoke would be.  They don’t bother building over the mountains around here, they just go through them.  I do realize that the rock is probably a bit softer but they just plough right through.  It’s kind of embarrassing to look at our Trans Canada Highway and then look at the road from Split to Zagreb....  all four lane divided highway with one tunnel five kilometres long!

After we passed the first mountain range we got into more farm land and there were actually trees!  Its pretty interesting seeing their form of forestry around here.... Typically a small square plot of land with pine planted evenly spaced and right to the borders of the plot.  The farming looks pretty tough too as the amount of rock is tremendous.  Dad, you thought you had it bad in Saskatchewan picking rocks!!!  I was wondering why they had all these crazy long rock walls among their farmland and it’s all coming clear that you’ve got to put the rock somewhere so pile it into a wall so you don’t take up too much farmland.

Agricultural fields further east.

Dinner with a nice backdrop.

We arrived into Zagreb and found our accommodation really easily, a meager 300 meter walk from the bus station to our studio apartment that will serve as home for tonight.  Had some downtime so the kids could watch YouTube on the TV in English, which was a treat and then it was off to explore the city and find dinner.  We made it to the cathedral which is a major highlight in the city and they had the organ playing with people praying.  The choir even belted out a few songs which was pretty cool.  The acoustics in those old churches are pretty amazing.  They definitely knew how to build those types of things back then.  

Cool old buildings.

An old and rebuilt spire as the Kathedral is being rebuilt.

Hanging out in the main square.

The city was pretty dead and most of the shops were closed so it made for a nice peaceful evening.  We managed to find a nice restaurant just around the corner from the Kathedral and had a really good meal.  Here you order all the parts separate. Meat, veggies, salad, soup, etc it was a good way to go.  Headed back and checked out the bus station to see when and where our shuttle to the airport is, made the mandatory ice cream stop and headed back to the studio for a bit more TV before bed.