Monday, September 12, 2011

September 12 2011

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Day Three

Last night I tried to go to bed at 8 pm but in a hostel this can be a bit complicated. Roomies coming in at 2 am and other ones departing at 6 am there wasn’t much time for sleeping. I’ve slept enough for a day of sightseeing though!

It started off at St. Marks church, the iconic church that most people have seen at least once. The usual picture of the couple standing in front of it, you know the one right? I was one of those people snapping shots of it! For all the photographers out there, I’m sorry if you’re cringing at the thought of another cliché shot. You just can’t go to Zagreb and not get one!

After that, we took a little stroll around all the parliament buildings and looked at the architecture. At this point, nothing was really opened so we decided to take the walking tour of the upper town. Beautiful.

We saw the Zagreb cathedral, the biggest church in town, surrounded by renaissance walls. Then went to the market (Dolac) and bought some fruit. Here is where we almost got ripped off buying water (24kn for two small bottles where we later found one for 6 and triple the size!)

We ended our tour on Ilica where we picked up some gelato and headed for a nearby park. Not a bad way to spend the morning.

I decided I wanted to head out to see the botanical gardens and decided to take the walking tour of the lower town. Here I learnt a lot about architecture, city planning, and parks. It was a really nice walk but unfortunately the garden was closed by the time I got there.

Later I decided to try out a museum of Croatian history. It was neat to read about Ban Jelacic and his role in the 1880’s. The towne sqaure that I’m staying near is now named after him. Trg Bana Josipa Jelacica.

For dinner, we met up with a guy staying in our room and went to a cute little patio a few blocks away. We had poor service but we weren’t sure if it’s proper etiquette to leave a tip, so we did. After our tip the waiter said the most to us and seemed overly happy. We knew we did something wrong!

After dinner we went to the museum of broken relationships. Very interesting concept, where people donate an item in memory of a failed relationship. There were some pretty neat items there!

After the museum, I set off to meet my third cousin (great grandparents were sisters!). She took me to a little bar and we sat there and chatted the time away! It was a really neat experience to meet someone who is part of your family history. We don’t really have a  lot of opportunities to do things like that!

We’ll if you’ve read this far I give you credit. I’m sure you didn’t really want to read my blog for a history of Zagreb. So here are my thoughts so far: big city with a small town feel, great people, great shops, great food, and a slow casual paced city where cars actually stop for you!

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