Terry
100+ Posts
By teaberry from Philadelphia, PA, USA, Spring 2008
Highlights of a trip to Croatia and Montenegro in June 2008.
This trip report was originally posted on SlowTrav.
On the Road Again!
In early June of 2008, I spent a week in Croatia, traveling with a good friend. For my trip report, I thought I would share some highlights, lowlights, and sidelights. In no particular order.
The Adriatic
Uber Zagreb
My friend and I didn’t arrive at Zagreb airport, from London, until very late in the afternoon, and embarked towards the city “Centar” (as all city centers are referred to in Croatia) in our brand new VW Polo car rental just around the same time that the dark and ominous skies finally opened up and spewed out all that wet stuff. No problem, we were in Croatia, YAY! Zagreb radiated an Old World charm and mystique. The narrow, winding streets and centuries-old structures invited exploration, and that is exactly what we did, in the pouring rain, trying to find our accommodations.
Well, after about an hour’s worth of driving through Zagreb’s streets, we were no closer to finding our rental than when we started. I must say, though, that we thoroughly enjoyed being lost there - such a pretty town. The streets were like a Rubik’s maze, and I had even printed out directions! Stopping the very friendly passersby and eliciting further clarification only got us more lost. It seemed, though, that the key to finding our place, which was apparently located exactly in the interior and pedestrian core of the old Upper Town of Zagreb, was to drive the wrong way down the one way streets and to even drive up a few pedestrian walks (that were barely wide enough to pass!). I thought for sure we would be arrested (okay, that’s severe, but at the very least stopped), but no one seemed to mind us driving where we thought we didn’t belong. Lo and behold, that held the key to our finding our very well-tucked-in vacation rental. Right in the heart of the Old Town.
I do use the term vacation rental loosely here. Gail Hecko, another Slow Traveler, once described an accommodation she stayed in as a rabbit warren, and I must plagiarize those very apt words here also. This apartment had a website, had received quite a few very nice recommendations and everything looked so nice online. When we finally arrived, the owner was not in town. Luckily, though, his mother was. Not so lucky, she spoke practically no English. She led us to our rabbit warren, located atop a lively bar with an open courtyard and a very active back alley, showed us our room, and left us our keys. By this time it was after 8pm. We were tired and wet and hungry, and weren’t about to start looking for another place. So we bit the bullet and hunkered in for the night.
Old Zagreb is just spilling with restaurants, bars, and nightlife; we reveled in it for our share, which was pretty lame compared to the other more serious partiers. But we felt uber connected to the people and the electricity in the town. Zagreb is a great place for pub crawling. Until we got back to our rabbit warren. We were all in, but the night was still young for the rest of the city, particularly the people who were pubbing right under our rabbit warren’s windows. Our beds were more like cots, we had no towels or soap, and the bathroom was, well, smaller than a breadbox. We felt pretty skived by our vacation rental, enjoyed a choppy night’s sleep at best, and left the next morning in a hurry. We felt fairly assured that things could only get better from here, and we were quite right.
Trg Josep Jelacica, Old Zagreb's center square
Highlights of a trip to Croatia and Montenegro in June 2008.
This trip report was originally posted on SlowTrav.
On the Road Again!
In early June of 2008, I spent a week in Croatia, traveling with a good friend. For my trip report, I thought I would share some highlights, lowlights, and sidelights. In no particular order.
The Adriatic
Uber Zagreb
My friend and I didn’t arrive at Zagreb airport, from London, until very late in the afternoon, and embarked towards the city “Centar” (as all city centers are referred to in Croatia) in our brand new VW Polo car rental just around the same time that the dark and ominous skies finally opened up and spewed out all that wet stuff. No problem, we were in Croatia, YAY! Zagreb radiated an Old World charm and mystique. The narrow, winding streets and centuries-old structures invited exploration, and that is exactly what we did, in the pouring rain, trying to find our accommodations.
Well, after about an hour’s worth of driving through Zagreb’s streets, we were no closer to finding our rental than when we started. I must say, though, that we thoroughly enjoyed being lost there - such a pretty town. The streets were like a Rubik’s maze, and I had even printed out directions! Stopping the very friendly passersby and eliciting further clarification only got us more lost. It seemed, though, that the key to finding our place, which was apparently located exactly in the interior and pedestrian core of the old Upper Town of Zagreb, was to drive the wrong way down the one way streets and to even drive up a few pedestrian walks (that were barely wide enough to pass!). I thought for sure we would be arrested (okay, that’s severe, but at the very least stopped), but no one seemed to mind us driving where we thought we didn’t belong. Lo and behold, that held the key to our finding our very well-tucked-in vacation rental. Right in the heart of the Old Town.
I do use the term vacation rental loosely here. Gail Hecko, another Slow Traveler, once described an accommodation she stayed in as a rabbit warren, and I must plagiarize those very apt words here also. This apartment had a website, had received quite a few very nice recommendations and everything looked so nice online. When we finally arrived, the owner was not in town. Luckily, though, his mother was. Not so lucky, she spoke practically no English. She led us to our rabbit warren, located atop a lively bar with an open courtyard and a very active back alley, showed us our room, and left us our keys. By this time it was after 8pm. We were tired and wet and hungry, and weren’t about to start looking for another place. So we bit the bullet and hunkered in for the night.
Old Zagreb is just spilling with restaurants, bars, and nightlife; we reveled in it for our share, which was pretty lame compared to the other more serious partiers. But we felt uber connected to the people and the electricity in the town. Zagreb is a great place for pub crawling. Until we got back to our rabbit warren. We were all in, but the night was still young for the rest of the city, particularly the people who were pubbing right under our rabbit warren’s windows. Our beds were more like cots, we had no towels or soap, and the bathroom was, well, smaller than a breadbox. We felt pretty skived by our vacation rental, enjoyed a choppy night’s sleep at best, and left the next morning in a hurry. We felt fairly assured that things could only get better from here, and we were quite right.
Trg Josep Jelacica, Old Zagreb's center square