Driving to Zagreb

Declan was very excited this morning; I was definitely not: It was snowing.

We picked up our hire car from central Budapest this morning. Driving on the wrong side of the road, in a strange city, in the middle of a snow storm was somewhat stressful. On the positive side, once we got out of Budapest, we were on a divided highway and it wasn’t very difficult driving until we entered Zagreb.

The drive only takes about three-and-a-half hours so by late morning we pulled up in Dugo Selo, which is just to the East of Zagreb, and had a quick photo with the sign for the street named for my grandfather. Another quick stop in a local graveyard, looking for earlier ancestors, proved fruitless and we moved on to Zagreb. We parked the car, checked into our hotel, and went out in search of coffee.

Coffee was easy to find as our hotel is on the main street and every second shopfront is a cool cafe with cakes and coffee. Refreshed, we decided we could do more and caught the world’s shortest funicular railway up to the old town to take a look at St Mark’s Church with it’s intricately tiled roof. The Zagreb Town Museum is not far so we spent some time exploring there. It’s a great little museum and we learnt a lot about Zagreb over the thousand years to 1991.

By the time we were finished, darkness had fallen and the city was alive with lights. Zagreb Christmas Markets have been voted the best in Europe for the last two years and it’s easy to see why as you wander around. We grazed our way through a meal in the markets while listening to a series of great choirs on the main stage. We had sausages, knudels, and kaisersmarnn – and the world was good.

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