Zagreb - a city full of surprises


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Europe » Croatia » Central Croatia » Zagreb
May 30th 2016
Published: June 4th 2016
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We arrived in Zagreb at 11:00pm by train from Vienna. Border crossing into Croatia was easy, no issues with Swiss resident permit and Schengen visa. I had taken a apartment 5min walking from the train station - Carla Studio Apartment. The very nice owner was waiting there for us to hand over the keys. Nice apartment, though we would spend just the night there and leave early in the morning. Today's plan was to see a couple of small museums and then off to Lake Plitvice at 15:00.

First stop - Museum of Illusions. It is a small museums with games and some optical illusion exhibits. The entry of 40Kuna is a bit steep for such a small place, but we enjoyed it very much. Time spent - 1 hr.

Next stop - Museum of Croatian Naive Arts. This caught my eye as it was not the typical museum with typical paintings, but village artists depicting every day life. Walk from Museum of Illusions to this one took about 30min, with bit of uphill walking. It is a nice walk, and you get good view of Zagreb from top. The museum is very nice - 25Kuna (there was additional student discount here). I totally loved it, paintings are all very nice. This museum is highly recommended. I also ended up buying to posters here.

Next to the museum is St Marks church. The church was closed, but its exteriors are beautiful. This also happened to be 26th independence day (something like that) for Croatia. Next to St Marks were some government buildings and there were lines of politicians coming in black flagged cars. We watched that for few minutes. I was surprised as the relaxed environment around such an event - a police officer told me both President and Prime Minister of Croatia are attending the event. Still no heavily guarded people running around, no roped off area - we were able to walk very close to entrance of the buildings and peer inside.

From here we walked down to the farmer's market. Its a small square with red umbrellas - local farmers selling fruits and vegetables. We did our shopping for Lake Plitvice here as we intended to cook there. The fruits were very good, so were vegetables - so fresh. Definitely stop here and get some seasonal fruits. Then we walked back to our hotel to grab our bags, short stop for lunch and then off to Lake Plitvice.

June 1st

One the way back from Lake Plitvice we had 4 hrs to spare in Zagreb. I used this time to go back to the main square and see the cathedral. I was surprised at how beautiful the cathedral was. Carved insides and outsides, and big painted glass. Loved it. My mother visited the art and craft museum and loved it too. Then we sat down in a garden next to the university and art/craft museum and had our lunch.


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7th June 2016
St Marks

St Marks
Beautiful. I'd like to go in this one.

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