This latest trip was one that B-Rod and I intended to have planned. To know where we were going at least 21 days before we left and how long we were going to be there. To have confirmed flights which would allow us to reserve places and do some research before hitting the ground somewhere else. To not have to come up with things as we went along. To actually have a plan to follow and stick to.
And then our “21 day deadline” came and we were both like . . . . Nah! 😝
A week before we left, we still didn’t quite know where we’d get to, but we came up with some place to aim for.
Even when we got to the airport in Rome, a friend currently in Italy was texting me suggestions of where to go and things to explore there in the event we didn’t make it on our next flight with our destination choice of Croatia.
And how did we even end up choosing Croatia as a destination in the first place?! I know I’ve wanted to go there for awhile, but I can’t really remember anymore why. B-Rod’s sister and her husband had taken a motorbike trip for their honeymoon over 20 years ago and said Croatia was their fav. That stuck with B. We also have friends going to the country next month, but thinking they might be there in Sept, we thought it would be fun to “run into them” All of those reasons combined seems to be how we made the last minute decision (that ended up working out) of using B-Rod’s latest vacation time to explore the Republic of Croatia. 🇭🇷
Zagreb
Our journey started in the capital where we spent a couple days recalibrating, making some decisions of what to see and where to go, and being rained on like we’ve never been rained on before!
We coasted through and wandered the streets getting a feel for the city.
We got up close and covered our ears to check out the cannon. “The Grič cannon has been marking Zagreb’s noon for more than 137 years” There’s a legendary story around that, but you’ll have to click here to find out what that is! 🙃
A highlight for us in this city was discovering an art installation called “Nine Views” by artist Ivan Kožarić. It’s the entire solar system made with stainless steel spheres for planets with their sizes and distances made proportional to the actual solar system. These spheres appeared to be in random (yet not random at all!) places, and no one seemed to give much notice to them. It was like a fun, educational scavenger hunt marvelling at the giganticness of all that is.
Zagreb was also where we randomly came across our team name, . . . . .
and where it rained and rained AND RAINED!!!
Road Trip
We decided to do things a little bit differently than we usually do and rent a car instead of relying on public transport. B-Rod only had just over a week to play with, and we wanted to be able to see the countryside, see stuff outside of the toll highways and make random stops along the way as we felt called. We made up a lot of our stops for the nights as we got going, but in the end, our journey looked a little like this (minus our spontaneous stops, impromptu side trips and “finding ourselves lost” detours) . . .
Croatia has such varied and diverse landscapes, that there were often times B & I would have to remind ourselves where we were. At different points we could have been in places like Switzerland, Italy, the UK, to name but a few. It was very easy to get around, very easy to drive, very easy to fix any mistakes we made that sometimes we even had to remind ourselves that we were actually in another country and not simply driving around at home!
We also spent a lot of time commenting about how beautiful it was (“LOOK AT THAT!!” was a common expression said in the car), a lot of time regretting we couldn’t go to all the good swim spots we saw (there were sooooo many), but also a lot of time wrapping our minds around the fact that it was only 30 years ago (August 1995 listed “officially”) that the war ended here (which when you get to be our age, doesn’t really sound like that long ago . . . . especially since I can vividly remember the images of devastation and suffering from this area on the news when I was a kid!)
Our side stops tended to be places where we looked out over the amazingness of nature, . . . .
. . . . swim spots, or . . . .
. . . . anything else we found interesting along the way
We did actually do more than just drive around! We actually stopped overnight in places, sometimes for a couple of days, and saw some pretty cool and magical things. You’ll have to wait for the next blog to see all of that though! 😆
