We arrived into Zagreb reasonably late in the afternoon, to the Movie Hotel. That was quite entertaining. Each room was dedicated to an actor, and had their name on the door and photos of them all over the walls. We had a random roommate switch again, and Ina and I scored the Jack Nicholas room. It was a little bit odd, one of the first photos I saw was a still from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, of him screaming with his face covered in blood. Not particularly conducive to restful sleep, to be fair. There were rooms dedicated to Penelope Cruz, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp, which a few people were rather disappointed they missed out on. Ah well, you can’t win them all.
The hotel is a reasonable way out of Zagreb, so we caught the tram into town to go for our city walk. Zagreb is cool and a little different because it has two old towns. They were on neighbouring hills and apparently used to fight each other at every opportunity, but then when the Ottomans came along they united to fight against them. There’s not a lot of delineation between the two old towns, they seem to have blended into one, and the new city has grown up around the bottom of the hills. The map you can get from the tourist info centre has a few different walking tours marked on it, so for our city walk we followed one of those, up through both old towns. It’s very pretty, as is the new part of the central city.
We stayed two nights in Zagreb, and the next day I only had a couple of things I wanted to do: 1. Visit the Technical Museum, which I’d read about in my Lonely Planet and wanted to see because it had a big central display of old planes; 2. Find a decent coffee. I was like it’s Zagreb, it’s a reasonably big city, there must be decent coffee.
We’d passed the Technical Museum on our way into town the previous evening, so I figured I could walk from the hotel. Yeah, and it only took like 45 minutes. Never mind, I got there in the end. The museum was under construction, and basically empty of people. It was so weird. You’d walk into a room and there’d be panels missing off the walls. I heard a group of school kids at one stage, but they must’ve been leaving, and I only saw two other visitors in the hour or so that I was there. It was a bit random as museums go. All the exhibits did fall under the heading “technical”, but as a collection they were a little bit odd. There was a room of engines, just random bits of engines from boats and planes and cars through the history of… well, engines. There was also a room full of fire trucks. And one about geology. And one about mining. And one about space travel, with a planetarium that was apparently shut. And a display about a Croatian who made a lot of advances in electricity, which was again apparently not working. They theoretically did shows in there a few times a day.
I did love the display of planes. They had heaps of them, generally from Yugoslavia, all absolutely crammed into quite a small space. You could walk around between them and touch them if you wanted to. They were mostly on the ground, but also some on platforms and some suspended from the ceiling. In the same room, there were also a couple of horse-drawn carriages, three cars of various ages and not necessarily chosen for their beauty, a collection of motorbikes and pushbikes which was pretty cool, trams, train engines, and probably coolest of all, a submarine. It took me ages to figure out what it was. They don’t signpost things particularly well, you have to go and hunt out the sign, and then that sign doesn’t necessarily relate to the vehicle that it’s closest to.
So that was a pretty awesome couple of hours. What kind of geek am I. Oh yeah, and I met one of our group going in as I was coming out, he amounted to the third person I’d seen during the time I was there.
Next was coffee. I’d spent quite a lot of time on the internet that morning, trying to hunt out some kind of reasonable coffee shop. I can deal with Costa Coffee, they’re pretty good, and I found very vague mention of one which was kinda out in the burbs of the business district, so I figured that was a good idea. I caught a tram from the museum into the centre of town, and went for a walk for a little bit, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The city is really lovely, there’s a great big park down the middle of the road I walked down, which was just off the square, and all the buildings are from (or at least look like they’re from) the turn of the century (I mean 1900, not 2000) and are well kept and look freshly painted and bright. Once I’d convinced myself there was no reasonable coffee to be had around that area, I took a tram out to the address I’d found for Costa Coffee, which was past the city bus station. I didn’t have a number, just the name of the street, so I started at one end and kept walking. And walking. And walking. I didn’t get lost or anything like that, but I did walk along this street and back again for almost an hour. No Costa Coffee. I was sad. And by then I had really sore feet. However, I saw an area of the city that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen! The central city’s much nicer though…
The hotel is a reasonable way out of Zagreb, so we caught the tram into town to go for our city walk. Zagreb is cool and a little different because it has two old towns. They were on neighbouring hills and apparently used to fight each other at every opportunity, but then when the Ottomans came along they united to fight against them. There’s not a lot of delineation between the two old towns, they seem to have blended into one, and the new city has grown up around the bottom of the hills. The map you can get from the tourist info centre has a few different walking tours marked on it, so for our city walk we followed one of those, up through both old towns. It’s very pretty, as is the new part of the central city.
Old Town One - Kaptol
Old Town two - Gradec - St Mark's Church
We stayed two nights in Zagreb, and the next day I only had a couple of things I wanted to do: 1. Visit the Technical Museum, which I’d read about in my Lonely Planet and wanted to see because it had a big central display of old planes; 2. Find a decent coffee. I was like it’s Zagreb, it’s a reasonably big city, there must be decent coffee.
We’d passed the Technical Museum on our way into town the previous evening, so I figured I could walk from the hotel. Yeah, and it only took like 45 minutes. Never mind, I got there in the end. The museum was under construction, and basically empty of people. It was so weird. You’d walk into a room and there’d be panels missing off the walls. I heard a group of school kids at one stage, but they must’ve been leaving, and I only saw two other visitors in the hour or so that I was there. It was a bit random as museums go. All the exhibits did fall under the heading “technical”, but as a collection they were a little bit odd. There was a room of engines, just random bits of engines from boats and planes and cars through the history of… well, engines. There was also a room full of fire trucks. And one about geology. And one about mining. And one about space travel, with a planetarium that was apparently shut. And a display about a Croatian who made a lot of advances in electricity, which was again apparently not working. They theoretically did shows in there a few times a day.
The engine display...
...the electricity room....
...and selfportrait, me with a girl in a pink t-shirt.
I did love the display of planes. They had heaps of them, generally from Yugoslavia, all absolutely crammed into quite a small space. You could walk around between them and touch them if you wanted to. They were mostly on the ground, but also some on platforms and some suspended from the ceiling. In the same room, there were also a couple of horse-drawn carriages, three cars of various ages and not necessarily chosen for their beauty, a collection of motorbikes and pushbikes which was pretty cool, trams, train engines, and probably coolest of all, a submarine. It took me ages to figure out what it was. They don’t signpost things particularly well, you have to go and hunt out the sign, and then that sign doesn’t necessarily relate to the vehicle that it’s closest to.
So that was a pretty awesome couple of hours. What kind of geek am I. Oh yeah, and I met one of our group going in as I was coming out, he amounted to the third person I’d seen during the time I was there.
Next was coffee. I’d spent quite a lot of time on the internet that morning, trying to hunt out some kind of reasonable coffee shop. I can deal with Costa Coffee, they’re pretty good, and I found very vague mention of one which was kinda out in the burbs of the business district, so I figured that was a good idea. I caught a tram from the museum into the centre of town, and went for a walk for a little bit, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. The city is really lovely, there’s a great big park down the middle of the road I walked down, which was just off the square, and all the buildings are from (or at least look like they’re from) the turn of the century (I mean 1900, not 2000) and are well kept and look freshly painted and bright. Once I’d convinced myself there was no reasonable coffee to be had around that area, I took a tram out to the address I’d found for Costa Coffee, which was past the city bus station. I didn’t have a number, just the name of the street, so I started at one end and kept walking. And walking. And walking. I didn’t get lost or anything like that, but I did walk along this street and back again for almost an hour. No Costa Coffee. I was sad. And by then I had really sore feet. However, I saw an area of the city that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen! The central city’s much nicer though…
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