After the summer heat of Split and Dubrovnik, Plitvice National Park was like a walk in the park (literally). Then there was Zagreb, which was much cooler and a little more grey than those two coastal cities. There was more cement, more buildings and grey skies to accompany our stay. Even the attempted scam on our little grey rental car never really greyed our experience in Croatia’s capital.
Here’s the deal (and, boy do we love to find those!), we don’t exactly like spending a lot of money (I mean, we do but we don’t). This causes us to be a little more –how do I say this without sounding like the carbon-turned-diamond form of a penny-pincher (my grip on those pennies are so tight, in two weeks, you’ll have a diamond) –creative in our activities. We tend to walk a lot more rather than take a taxi (or even public transportation). So, we see a lot of things that would otherwise be missed just by propelling our feet in a forward motion.
Zagreb was pretty neat in providing cheap-esque things for us to do. Like, Finding the universe. As we walked around the center of Zagreb–a big open square that, surprise surprise, was a little bit grey –there was a placard on a building. On that placard was a half-sphere about as big as a dime. “Look, it says “Mercury,” I said and immediately our interest was piqued.
Oh Hey Husband. Looks like you found Mercury
The good thing about Zagreb is that the city has free wifi in a lot of places. We used that to learn that Mercury was just one of ten art installations that encompasses the entire city of Zagreb. It’s called Nine Views. There are literally nine planets all around Zagreb modeled to be a smaller ratio of the size of the actual planets with the same scaled-down distance between them. The sun is right in the middle of Zagreb. We made it all the way up to Jupiter before we had to call it quits. Finding the planets is fun and we got to see all kinds of things in Zagreb, like this:
Artuditu…I…I don’t know. Sheepest. He’s the beh-eh-eh-eh-est.Some of the street art was very amusing (but nothing like Ljubljana…stay tuned!). There was art with sheep playfully poking their heads around the corner of a building. There were subtle red hearts and other things lurking on nondescript walls.
One thing we will spend our money on is museums. In our opinion, museums and galleries are great places to learn about history and art. Some art we see is classic. And yet, some art we see is –ummm, how do I put this–modern. The Museum of Broken Relationships is my idea of “modern,” in that it focuses not on traditional paint or photography, but symbolic objects to convey “art.” Volunteers sent in items and mementos of past loves that had gone awry and put them on display (you can probably even send your own).
MoBR has the range of emotions: From happy to sad…to crazy…Some of these mementos are hilarious. Still others were pretty sad. Like the key, in the photo below. Others were more insane, like the side-view mirror. To summarize, its description is about a girl who finds her soon-to-be-ex’s car in front of the wrong house. She pummeled it, took the side-view mirror and the next day, her ex said some crazy kids messed with his car. Neither of them would confess where they were the night before and yadda yadda yadda, the side-view mirror sits in MoBR today.
The key…wow…so sad.Single folk may really enjoy MoBR. We saw a few people tear up over some of the “art.” We, however, were on our honeymoon (and there’s no crying on your honeymoon, my friends). So, we headed to the Funicular just up the street from MoBR.
Los Angeles has their own version of Zagreb’s funicular. It’s called Angel’s Flight. The funicular and Angel’s Flight are very similar in that they go uphill and back down at a length of about 217 feet. It’s fun and very cheap to ride.
To the Funicular! Let’s go!Now It’s Your Turn!
Personally, Zagreb was my favorite city in Croatia. The weather was much cooler and it’s walkable. There are plenty of parks and a lot of great places to eat. Zagreb is easy to get to by train (or in our case, a rental car). The Funicular is located at Tomiceva Street, just a little ways from Ilica Street. The pluto planet in the Nine Views Art installation is pretty far out in the suburbs of Croatia. That one might not be able to be found in a day.
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