Zagreb

Okay, so we are safe and sound in Slovenia, which has so far proven to be a very beautiful country. I was unable to blog last night because the person in front of me using the internet spent an hour on face book. Therefore, the moment I got online the people waiting behind us got mad at me. Anyway, going to try to get the two blog posts done in the 30 minutes I have.

We woke up at the crack of dawn to catch our 6 am train. Well, when I say we, I mean me. Gianni went to bed a little after me and woke up a little before me. Andrew got like an hour of sleep and Mia did not sleep at all. Fun times. We got out and walked among the late night partygoers and the people off to work early in the morning. Made it to the train station an hour early. Everyone was upset with me about this.

Once there, this guy approached us and asked us if we were going to Prague. Naturally since we were in Eastern Europe, had already been harassed by the seedy currency exchange people and are not dumb, we kept our guard when he kept on asking us where we were going and told us he worked for a hostel. Eventually, he got mad at us for being rude and left, saying that he only wanted to help us. I saw later that he found another group of backpackers to help. He was kind of creepy and reminded me of that Italian character in Eurotrip.

We boarded the train at 530 and started to drift off to sleep. Shortly after the train took off, this grouch of a ticket collector came in and yelled at us for our tickets. Once we gave them to her, she spent a good two minutes scouring each of our Eurail passes, trying to find some way to fine us and kick us off of the train. She finally found something to yell at us about, Gianni not having a stamp on his new pass. This has not been a problem as we got his new pass in Amsterdam and that was about a week ago. Also, the very, very precise woman at the ticket desk in Amsterdam told Gianni just to show the copy of the old pass to show that it got stamped. I think I believe her over the grouch who was probably related to that woman from the train station in Paris.

Other than that, we slept for the majority of the train ride. Well, at least until we got to the point where the customs people had to come in and do their thing. About six people came in to check our passports (we got two stamps from Croatia) and make sure we didnt have anything to declare. None of us could really sleep after that.

We got into Zagreb around 12 and walked to our hostel. Got a little lost along the way even though there were fliers in our previous hostel that had directions to the hostel on them. Its because of the street signs. The street we were looking for does not turn into that street until halfway down. Obviously that does not help.

We checked into our hostel, got some restaurant tips from the front desk (since there was no food on the train and we were all starving). We found this cheap and good Italian restaurant nearby and ate there.

After that, we started our short walking tour of Zagreb. Our first stop was some little market that we found. Mia loves those, so we usually stop whenever we see one. Next, was the Cathedral of the Assumption. The famous nun game still gets played out on this trip, so that made the trip a little more fun. Anyway, the inside of the Cathedral was very pretty, but it was a lot quieter in that church than in other Cathedrals that I have been to, so we all felt very awkward and left after we took a few pictures.

We sat outside on the nearby statue for a while. We thought Gianni left to go buy something, but he was actually leading to our next destination. We waited for him for a good twenty minutes until we realized he was standing in the shade waiting for us. Oops.

We walked up this large hill (Andrew was once again bitter) to go see the next few things. The first stop was the Stone Wall, which used to be one of the gates of the city. Its a church now or something, so it was actually a lot more interesting and cool than we all thought it would be. We found a market next and since we were dehydrated and its now very hot, got some drinks.

Then, we found St. Marks Church, which is very pretty because the roof is made out of colorful tiles (or something like that). Walked around a little longer and found another church (St. Catherines or something). We didnt go inside the actual church, but hung around the courtyard because it overlooked a gorgeous view of the city of Zagreb. We hung out there for a while before realizing that it might be good to move on.

As we were leaving, we heard medieval music. We followed the sounds to this kind of silly fight with a couple of people in armor. It was short lived, but fun while it lasted. We were going to go up the Lotrscak Tower to see another view of the city, but didnt feel like paying, so ended up just taking the funicular down the hill.

Because we were almost out of Croatian currency and didnt want to exchange more, we decided to play it very cheap for dinner. We bought a loaf of bread and some jelly and peanut butter and the like, and just decided to eat that for dinner. It worked out very well beacuse we have nutella and peanut butter left. Everything else lasted us for breakfast and lunch today. Anyway, we ended our walking tour of Zagreb at the square that our hostel was locaated near. Its like the big square of Zagreb but I dont remember the name. There were actually more things to see in the city, but because of the heat and everyones lack of sleep, we decided to call it a day early on.

Got into the hostel and watched BBC while waiting forever for the Internet. Then, played Machiavelli until almost ten, ate dinner, played Machiavelli until they closed up the common room, and then got ready and went to bed.

That was about it for that day. Our only day in Croatia really, which was a pity. I would have liked to see more of Zagreb and the pictures I saw of the Croatian coast looked gorgeous. Maybe another time.