A Quiet Drive to Samobor

---

Our trip today was one of our shortest drives on this adventure. We are on our way from Croatia to Hungary and to make the journey in one day was going to be a challenge so we decided to break the journey in Samobor, a little to the west of Zagreb. Our hosts were not expecting us before 4:00pm so we took our time covering the 120km from the Plitvicka Lakes.
The rolling countryside was a mixture of agriculture and forest and the traffic moved at a very sedate pace, unlike the frenetic pace of the traffic in Bosnia. Once we reached Jastrebarsko we took the scenic route to Samobor. As we were very close to the Slovenian border we expected border guards to emerge from the trees at any moment. The road twisted and turned and got quite narrow at times. The views of the surrounding countryside were quite beautiful. Even taking this scenic detour we still arrived far too early for our check in so we thought we would check out the address and then perhaps pop into Zagreb for a few hours.
As you already know Miss GPS has taken a holiday somewhere in Austria and has promised to join us in Frankfurt (Oder) in early August, so we have to rely on our inadequate road maps, Google Maps and the driving instructions handed on from the hotel. It all sounds easy, and up until today, it has been. Our first problem was not being able to find the route number of the roads we were on. Second problem, we were not coming from Zagreb, so the instructions had an extra complication. Fortunately we did have an email sent to us from the accommodation giving us driving instructions in very broken English. So out came the laptop, find the exit to the motorway and carefully follow the directions. What a relief, after nearly two hours of sightseeing Samobor we found our accommodation high in the hills overlooking Zagreb and the mountains on the border with Slovenia.
It was too late to visit Zagreb, not a city on our itinerary anyway, so we had time for a walking tour of the historic centre of Samobor. The short time we were there we noted that it would be a delightful place to sit at one of the many outdoor eating establishments in the open town centre and enjoy the passing crowd, especially on a warm summer’s night. Today everything was quiet.
From our accommodation we look across hectares of vineyards owned by our hosts. The delightful welcome was sealed by a very nice glass of their special dessert wine, and later we had a delicious meal on the terrace viewing the setting sun over the Slovenian mountains.
Tomorrow we cross the border into Hungary for a two-night stay in Pecs.

---