Zagreb

Zagreb, for a relatively large city (around 800,000 inhabitants, with over a million in the metropolitan area), seems pleasant and livable. Surprisingly, Mary Joy liked it better than the better-touristed Ljubljana.

On Monday, August 29th, we met our local guide “under the horse’s tail” in the main square (apparently a common meeting place for Zagrebians), except that he came to greet us before we actually got to Jelacic’s statue. I’d accidentally left my new camera in the room, so I didn’t get pictures until that afternoon, and then the first six or eight of them were bleached out because I’d forgotten to reset the white balance. The guide took us through a tunnel under the Gradec hill, then onto and up the shortest funicular in Europe. Zagreb’s Old Town had originally been two separate, walled cities on two separate hills, the commercial Gradec and the religious Kaptol. Neither, and especially not Kaptol, is a towering prominence, like (as we would later see) Ljubljana’s Castle Hill. We went up to the square in front of St. Mark’s Church, with its elaborately tiled roof, then went down through the Stone Gate, with its shrine to a miraculous painting of the Virgin (unharmed in an eighteenth-century fire that destroyed everything around it, including its frame). Then around a sharp bend containing a statue of St. George and the dragon (though, as our guide said, many Zagrebians, not seeing a dragon that conforms to their idea of proper dragonhood, call it “St. George and the Catfish”).

Now, over and up to the Dolac Market, Zagreb’s big indoor and outdooer market. Finally, into the Cathedral, which while largely 13th-century, was reconstructed following massive damage from an earthquake in 1880. The rebuilt façade has two spires, which at 354 feet make the Cathedral still the tallest building in Croatia.

On our own for the afternoon, Mary Joy and I went back to our room for my camera, then went straight up to the market, then to a restaurant named Trilogija, near the stone gate. Mary Joy had sea bass, while I had a shrimp and mango risotto, both very good.
We went to the Museum of Naïve Art. Many of the works, by untrained artists, showed substantial talent. The young woman at the ticket desk (on her last day working there), when Mary Joy asked for a recommendation for a place to have something to drink, suggested the oldest tavern in Zagreb, Pod Starim Krovoima (“Old Rooftops”), from 1830. We went there and had a beer.

We visited St. Catherine’s, the Jesuit church, then headed back down, through the Stone Gate, past St. George and the Catfish, and down some steps to the side, and around again, until we were on a street full of outdoor bars and restaurants, which took us down to the main square. On the way back to our hotel, we went through a big, old galleria.

That evening, the group ate together at Pulger, a restaurant up the street from our hotel. Not great.