City break in Zagreb

City break ratings
Recommended days	2
Budget	£
Difficulty	Easy

Why Zagreb?

We chose Zagreb just because it was somewhere we hadn’t been, fitted our budget and if I’m honest, I liked the name. This was a city break in Zagreb for the weekend, exploring the Upper and Lower City for travel photography and sightseeing while staying at the Doubletree. Looking on the web there were no ‘must see’ sights there but it looked like a pleasant old city to wander around. This was a package city break, booked with BA holidays as it was actually better value than sorting it myself.

Accommodation

The Doubletree was predictably good with 2 cookies for me when we checked in as Deb doesn’t eat them and a free room upgrade with breakfast for being diamond members. Our room was excellent – a corner room with a separate desk area so I could go on the laptop in the morning without disturbing Deb. We had views of the lower city and the hills beyond the upper city. Wifi was good and there was a gym too, in case we didn’t get enough walking done around the city.

First Impressions

Once we’d sorted our stuff out we headed out for a longer than expected walk to our dinner venue. This was chosen from Trip Advisor as somewhere that Deb could actually eat on her keto diet and was a traditional Croatian meal of salmon burger and chips for me and prawn salad for her!

The walk was through a mixture of modern commercial buildings, run down and abandoned older buildings and then three linked city parks. The streets were all wide and well laid out and there were lots of trams that were about the size of two train carriages each. Sadly there was also tagging on almost every building, the scourge of western urbanisation.

We had packed for heavy rain and cold as that’s what the forecast was before we left but tonight at least it was dry and relatively warm. We arrived back at the hotel after a couple of hours and sat down for a welcome coffee.

The City

The next morning I was woken at 4AM by the noise of a bloody nightclub nearby! I led there until nearly 5 but failed to go back to sleep which was damned frustrating.

Luckily breakfast was excellent so that redeemed the morning somewhat and we eventually left the hotel for the trek to the Upper Town. We followed the same route as yesterday but spent longer in the three parks that led to the Lower Town as it was light so we could actually look around.

Lower City

We then continued on into the main square with a statue of Count Josip Jelacic (who gained independence for Croatia from Hungary) before taking the lift to Zagreb 360 observation platform.

We’d seen the one in Bratislava but this couldn’t have been more different – the girl in Bratislava couldn’t even be bothered to look up from filing her nails as she took our money and indicated the vague direction of the lifts. The girls in Zagreb were very helpful and pleasant as they explained that the ticket (€4?) lasted all day so we could return at any time. We walked around the ledge, very carefully taking pictures, before sitting inside and having a coffee.

Upper City

After this brief pause we followed the tram tracks until we reached the funicular (the shortest in the world and 5kn each) and then had a very brief walk around the Upper Town before I visited Lotrscak Tower (20 kunar). Although I had walked past the gun being prepared for the midday firing it still nearly gave me a bloody heart attack when it went off as I was taking pictures from the balcony above! Deb sensibly stayed on the ground while I took my photos.

The Upper Town was very quiet and small, it looked like mostly 17/18th century buildings and I know the city was razed by the Mongols in the 13th century. We visited the Museum of Broken Relationships (80 kunar for 2)- I was expecting this to be a bit anti climatic with the name being the best thing but it was actually excellent, some funny/sad/poignant/pathetic and heart wrenching stories and associated objects and we spent about half an hour looking at the exhibits.

St Mark’s Church had a very pretty roof but we couldn’t see the interior as it was closed. We walked around before leaving by the Stone Gate, Deb pausing to get some earrings while I looked at the statue of St George.
We slowly made our way back to the hotel with a diversion to see the Botanical Gardens (closed until 1st April)….

Out for the evening

We got back at about 3PM, both baking as the predicted 4 degree high was actually 13 degrees and we were wearing arctic weather gear! I was also wearing footwear I hadn’t worn for ages and today I discovered why, with 3 blisters and a bleeding toe from rubbing. I would say ‘live and learn’ but I have consistently proved that untrue! I had a most welcome soak in the bath!

Before it got dark we took a taxi to the Lower Town in time to watch a very cloudy sunset from Zagreb 360 and have a coffee whilst Deb chose our dinner venue. She settled on Batak, a very nice grill house where she had a mixed grill and I had salmon. I have to say, the food and the service were both superb and for two excellent mains plus cider, wine and raki it cost less than £30!

We were intending to walk through the parks and pick a taxi up at the train station but we saw one a lot closer so nabbed that and got back to the hotel before 9, louche night birds that we are! The taxi’s were a bargain, about £3 to/from the hotel so if we’d realised that the day before it would have saved a lot of blisters!

The next morning we had both slept well and woke to glorious sunshine. Sadly, we were also heading home after another excellent breakfast. The airport was remarkably quiet and small but we spent a couple of hours reading and watching iPlayer stuff before our flight and then tedious drive back to Bristol.

Destination summary

Zagreb was actually a great destination for a city break. The attractions were all within walking distance so once you’d got to the Lower Town by taxi or tram things were easy. There was plenty to do for a day, maybe 2 if you wanted to visit the Archeaology Museum and the Tesla Museum (which we’d have done if it was raining).

If you were there longer then it’s a very central location for day trips with plenty of places within a couple of hours drive. It was also a bargain place to visit with most things we did about half the price of the UK.