Zagreb - July 10 & 11

Alright soooo, Thursday morning we left Budapest for Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Our train was at 6AM, so we were up super early, after not sleeping very well in the crappy beds, but it was worth it because the next train wasn't until noon and was 3 hours longer! On the train we met a nice guy who taught us a new card game, which we desperately needed after pretty much playing the same game for 3.5 weeks! I mean, there are a lot of card games out there, but not many that can entertain you for hours on a train, with only one deck of cards and extremely limited space to put down cards haha. So it ended up being a pretty good train ride, and we made it to Zagreb by noon.

Our hostel was a bit far from the middle of town, but easy to get to by tram, and it was pretty nice, so that was good. We got to stay in a 7 person dorm, but in a double bed, and I was pumped not to have to climb into the top bunk. I actually like sleeping on the top of bunkbeds, but its nice to have a break every once in a while! The hostel also had free internet, and was clean and in a cute neighborhood, so all was looking good! We were really hungry, so we tried to find somewhere to eat relatively near the hostel before we headed into town, and we ended up at a pretty crappy restaurant with mediocre pasta, which made us pretty unhappy but we were starving so we ate it. At this point I realized I was completely exhausted and unhappy, so we decided to go back to the hostel and nap for awhile before going into town. Kasey isn't much of a napper, but I figured I could sleep for an hour or so and she could use the free internet! It ended up that I napped for 3 hours, and Kasey got some sleep too, which was good because we really needed it after our crappy Budapest hostel and early early train! So most of our time in Zagreb was shot, but that was alright because we had only planned it as a stopping over point on the way to the beach. We went into town that night and ate at a much better restaurant after trying unsuccessfully to find the ones recommended in the guidebook, but it was fun, and we saw some street performers, and the big church and some other sites along the way.

main plaza in Zagreb by night!

That night, we used the free internet for quite awhile, and headed to bed around 12:30. I had a hard time getting to sleeping because one of the guys in our room was breathing soooo heavily... not snoring, but still loud, and my earplugs just were not effective enough... I eventually got to sleep, only to be woken up at 4:15 by actual snoring, and super loud! I wasn't even tired enough to go right back to sleep, probably due to the long nap, so I admitted defeat, and headed back upstairs to the internet, where I proceeded to watch all the episodes of the Bachelorette that I have missed since I left, including the finale. It was great, actually. So I basically got no sleep, but I still felt pretty good, and by the time Kasey got up, we had enough time to get ready and head out to the train station to catch our 11AM train to Split, on the coast. Unfortunately, reservations were required on the train, which we didn't know, and it was full, so we ended up stuck in Zagreb for 4 more hours, with absolutely nothing to do! I tried to find a way to ship my Hungarian wine home, but with no success, apparently you need a wooden box to ship the wine from Slovenia... oh well. We found a cafe and ordered Carlsberg (we had already had our Croatian beer the night before, no worries!) and played cards for 3 hours while we tried to make the beers last that long haha. But finally, we were off to Split, on a 6 hour train, and glad to be leaving Zagreb. We didn't necessarily have a bad time there, there just didn't seem to be anything to do, not to mention we were anxious to get to the beach for the weekend!!