We traveled with four friends around Croatia and Slovenia during spring break! We flew into the capital city of Zagreb on a Saturday afternoon.

Where we stayed
We found an awesome attic apartment on AirBnB (alliteration much?) for two nights. It was an easy walk from the city center in a calm little neighborhood. It was a great space and we recommend it if you’re looking to spend a few days in Zagreb. The day before we left ended our third quarter at school, so we were happy to simply relax on Saturday. We had brought an HDMI cord, connected our laptop to the TV, and watched some movies. It had a great little kitchen and we made a couple of meals there. (At the end of our trip, we spent one night at Design City Hostel. Don’t stay there, especially if you only have girls in your group. It’s a corporate building that was converted into a hostel. It’s not in a good location, the sheet were dirty, and it was super creepy.)

We were in Croatia during the last few days of March and the first week of April… which I’m pretty sure was off-season as far as tourism goes. It made traveling easy since places weren’t too crowded, but it seemed like nothing was open. Either that or businesses closed really early. We went into the city on Sunday. Most of the museums were closed, but we enjoyed walking around. We poked our heads into the Sunday service at the Zagreb Cathedral (aka the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary) and browsed the red umbrella-ed Dolac Market.

The skies were clear and the weather was warm. We soaked up the sunshine as we wandered around the streets and parks.

We wanted to go inside the National Theater, but alas, that too was closed:

Before we traveled to Croatia, we discovered the Triposo app (available for Android and iOS). It taps into WiFi even if you’re not connected to a network and updates your location on a map. It also lists recommendations of things to see and places to eat and has a currency converter built in. (It’s available for other countries, too. Definitely check it out before your next trip!)

The other landmark we were sure to see was the Church of St Mark:

The roof has the medieval coat of arms of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia on the left side, and the emblem of Zagreb on the right. There was a man with a crazy huge lens and fancy camera who stood near us. I asked him if I could see his photos. He didn’t speak English, but he figured out what I was saying. From what I could make out, the tiles were either round or hexagonal and were layered kind of like fish scales.

Day one and two of break were really relaxed. We didn’t have much of an agenda for Zagreb. We approached this trip a lot differently than we had other trips. We didn’t pre-book most of our lodging and we finalized our travel route once we were in-country rather than before. We felt really free because of this, but we ran into some challenges, too… More on that soon!

Here’s a recap of the trip:
» Day 1 & 2: Zagreb, Croatia
» Day 3: Bled, Slovenia
» Day 4: Ljubjlana, Slovenia
» Day 4: Škocjan Caves Park, Slovenia
» Day 5: Krk, Croatia
» Day 6: Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia
» Day 7: Split, Croatia