Day 30: Zagreb

I've been pleasantly surprised by Zagreb.  I'm not sure what I expected, but not the Vienna style buildings that are everywhere in the lower town.  The Austro-Hungarian Empire ruled Zagreb so the architecture should have been expected.  Here's a sampling of the buildings.

This one looks art nouveau.

Here is Art Pavilion and the Train Station.

There is a u-shaped series of parks that are great for strolling.

We ended up at the Modern Art Gallery.  There was an Albert Kinert Retrospective (Croatian Artist) which we liked a lot.

The permanent collection was great.  It was surprising that in a few rooms they hung a number of pieces by different artists together.

A few of my favorites were these>

This one is by Munir Vejzovic.

This one is by Petar Dobrovic call the Island of Hvar, where we visited.

We ate dinner at a lovely restaurant, Vinodol, recommended by our hotel.

Day 29: Ljubljana to Zagreb

Before we left for Zagreb, we wandered around Ljubljana.  It's really a cool place--especially because there are so many streets with no cars.

I love the man hole covers with the symbol of the city--a castle with a dragon on top.

Steven arranged for a Mercedes to drive us to Zagreb.  What a luxury and what easy travel.

We have a great hotel in Zagreb. It's right on the main drag, but with a long courtyard that keeps the noise and hustle & bustle out.

Day 28: The Castle

We spent most of the day at the castle overlooking Ljubljana.  There is a funicular that goes to the top.

The views are stunning.

We spent 3 hours in Strelec Restaurant, in the archers tower at the castle.  The chef, Igor Jagodic, is amazing.  We had a five course tasting menu. Each dish was better than the last.

We started on the terrace and when a few drops of rain came, we moved inside.

There was a museum of puppetry inside the castle, which was really great. Puppetry has been around here since the 15th century.

There was also an art exhibit by a woman who had tons of illustrations of the town symbol--the dragon.

Ljubljana came through on our last night with a rainbow over the city.

Day 27: Around Ljubljana

Spent the day walking around town.  This place is perfect for getting a coffee or glass of wine and sitting in a cafe people or dog watching.

We took a walk down some back alleys and found some surprising gardens right in the city.

My kind of shop.

I found a wonderful children's bookstore and bought a bilingual English/Slovenian book of folk tales.

It's amazing how similar Slovenian is to Croatian.  Of the few words of Croatian I know, I've been able to use about half of them here.  As we were walking back to our hotel, the moon was in just the right position.