With a better night’s sleep and some supplies to start the day with (i.e. coffee), we wanted to find out more about Zagreb and Croatia today. Looking outside it reflected that 60 degrees and rain was the forecast today, so we had to dig our raincoats out - this is Don’s “packed-in-the-bottom-of-a-backpack-for-a-month“ look.
We walked toward Old Town Zagreb today, which we learned about from watching YouTube this morning. This was less institutional and more village-like than the downtown area we’ve walked so far.
We‘d hoped to get a coffee/pastry on the way, but most shops we went by were closed (weird).
Specifically we wanted to see the famous cathedral up close, as we’d only seen the spire so far. The government has been actively restoring this after decades of neglect under Communist rule, so much of the outside looks very clean and new.
The restoration is recreating each specific block including the intricate spires - old and new side by side on the ground still.
Maybe the most intricate and impressive place on the cathedral was the entry.
And on the wall next to the cathedral is the original clock that had stopped during an earthquake in 1880.
This ornate fountain was directly in front of the cathedral.
After visiting here, we discovered that we were 2 minutes away last night where we had dinner...guess we get our miles in this way. We stepped in a nearby bakery and had a quick treat, then came out to this commotion:
This procession went around the renowned Dolac Market square which seemed random but culturally authentic and important for some reason. We walked down to the square we were in last night, named Ban Jelačić Square and walked by all the shops (which were all closed). Here is a 360 for perspective:
Then the horse parade showed up there too and we noticed the resemblance to the statue, concluding that it must be some tribute to this guy.
A few minutes walking from the square and we found this old funicular used to connect the lower and upper parts of the city.
We’d been walking for a couple hours now and needed some coffee and/or food, so we went in search of these as we explored more. To our dismay, every shop we came to was closed (we finally did get a couple cappuccinos - yum). We were also close to a telecom store and thought we could solve our SIM card issue while we were out - closed. We began to wonder if Wednesday is to Croatia what Sunday is to Turkey, but none of the store hours seemed to support that.
After another 30 minutes of walking we were deciding that we would just portion out our planned dinner to make a lunch too, when we found an open bakery with good pizza and pastries - ahh, satisfied.
Now with renewed energy, we walked back to the original telecom store we’d visited yesterday (across town) only to find it closed too. We finally decided to stop back into the apartment for a break and to see what the deal was with nothing being open - we learned this: Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian Defenders
Now it all made sense - the closed shops, the little parade to the square. We may have been too young but I don’t remember this event in the U.S. news at all.
While we were on a discovery spree, we also came across the fact that in March of this year, Zagreb had a major earthquake that condemned nearly 2,000 buildings - another news story we didn’t remember hearing in the U.S. This helps explain why there are some many buildings with broken facades, piles of rubble everywhere and scaffolding/construction work on nearly every street. We had thought this was just a city struggling from the years of Communist rule (which may be some of it), but now understand that they just endured a catastrophe right as they began to deal with a pandemic.
After our time out today, we spent the late afternoon catching up on mail/writing and watching some more of the Turkish Netflix show. We made steak and pasta for dinner and had a quiet night inside.
Comments