Our time in two Croatian cities – Zadar and Zagreb!

Well, clearly the posts have slowed down a little bit, but it’s been for a good reason! We’ve had lots of fun visitors with us lately – Poops (my sister) with us for 3 days in Oslo and now Daniella (Damian’s sister) and Ian (Daniella’s husband) with us in Portugal. It’s so super fun but it makes it less attractive to take time out to pause and write 🙂 But, all that being said I wanted to make sure to write about our last two stops in Croatia – Zadar and Zagreb – before too long!

Our 24 hours in Zadar

We didn’t originally have Zadar on our Croatia itinerary, but after exploring all that the Plitvice Lakes National Park and the area had to offer, we still had an open night in front of us. While there’s no big beaches in Zadar, there seemed to be a bunch of cool attractions for a 24-hour jaunt. So off Damian, Noèmie and I went!

To give you a little background, Zadar is a city of 25 square kilometers and about 75,000 people, which makes it the 5^th biggest city in Croatia. The city is located on the water (about halfway up Croatia’s coast) and is the oldest city in Croatia that has been continuously inhabited (since 9^th century BC!). Overall Zadar felt a little grittier and more authentic vs. Dubrovnik and Zagreb, and we really enjoyed it!

We got into town in the early afternoon, dropped off our stuff in the apartment we had found (right in the middle of the old city – it was pretty awesome!) and started exploring. Immediately everything was just so cute (and not super crowded, woohoo)!

You can walk the entire old city from end to end in about 10-15 minutes, so it was easy enough to do a loop of everything and then decide where to spend more time. One of the places that was a little silly and fun was the Pillar of Shame. In the “olden days” it was used to publicly shame people who had done bad things – and it wasn’t always about killing them, sometimes it was about just tying them there for a few hours so the passersby could gawk and stare. Of course, we had to act like morons in front of it (and extra points to anyone who can guess what we felt shameful for)!

The sea organ

One of the most famous parts of Zadar is the sea organ – a really neat piece of public art! Essentially, there is an area of the city wall that has been built to be an organ, so as the waves crash underneath it, the organ makes sounds from the waves’ power. I’ve included a video we took where you can hear the organ under the pictures below.

It’s a neat area to just sit and listen, and you can also swim in the (clear, blue, beautiful) water near it – which makes for an extra special listening experience. We spent about an hour here just relaxing and jumping and … searching for Damian’s Apple Watch that he lost while doing a dive. Luckily he found it and we still had a grand time anyway!

Views for days

Then we decided to do our favorite activity – climb up to the top of the highest tower in the city and check out the sights! We did just that in Zadar and got some beautiful views from up above!

And then to round out the sights, we had to go to the waterside again to see the sunset. There’s a rumor out there that Alfred Hitchcock said this about Zadar’s sunsets: “Zadar has the most beautiful sunset in the world, more beautiful than the one in Key West, Florida, applauded at every evening.” … and he may be right! It was crowded, but we got a table near the water, had a few drinks and enjoyed the view!

Sun salutation

Once the sun set it was time to head over to another one of Zagreb’s outdoor art pieces, called the sun salutation. Basically this is another big area near the water that has lots of solar panels installed in a circle (to represent the sun) in the floor. The panels charge all day and then at night they light up and the area becomes a fun hangout and dance and music area for people in Zadar to enjoy. Below you can see pictures of the area during the day and then at night.

After that, we did something very uncharacteristic of us and … headed to a nightclub! I know, we were as surprised as you are now. But, it was really fun! Aside from the hordes of European teenagers enjoying their summer, we loved the atmosphere. It was very casual, with inside and outside areas, a dance floor, a lounging space under the trees and just a super cool vibe. We had our fun and then hit the sack for our early drive to Zagreb the next day!

Our four days in Zagreb!

We arrived in Zagreb in the late morning, and it was sadly Noèmie’s last day with us! So, we did a lot of exploring with her and then also more exploring on our own after she left. I’m not going to differentiate when we did what too much because it’ll get confusing, but the pictures should make it more obvious!

We decided to stay in a hotel in Zagreb because we needed a few days of just having other people take care of the cooking, cleaning, eating, etc. and, even more importantly, we needed good internet. We ended up with a great room that gave us a full view of the city and so we got to planning and then headed out to explore!

Zagreb is the capital of Croatia and is also the country’s biggest city. The city has about 800,000 residents (almost ¼ of Croatia’s population lives there!) and is about 650 square miles. There is an “upper town” which is a bit more historic and a “lower town” which is a bit more business-y. It did feel pretty empty when we were there, I think because it was August and a lot of the government and private businesses were on holiday.

But anyway, we first went to upper town and found lots of cuteness pretty immediately! (also, by the way, the first picture below is the funicular between the lower town and the upper town, which is the shortest funicular in the world – only 60 meters!).

There were lots of historic buildings and, one of Zagreb’s most famous landmarks, St. Marks Church. This church was so neat because of the roof tiles – which were so beautiful and looked like different colored poker chips.

One of the days after Noèmie left we also climbed the tower at the top of upper town (as we always do, love those towers), and we got some more pretty amazing views of the city!

We then walked down from the upper town to the lower town and on the way we found a cool little summer festival. There were little food and drink vendors, cute summer and beach furniture to lounge on and this awesome singer and band performing. The icing on the cake was seeing an colorful sunset over the city!

We then started exploring lower town, which, to be honest, we had low expectations for. But then we stumbled upon this amazing painted egg (painted with a farmer’s scene in a different season on each of the four sides) and then onto the most fun street – Tkalciceva.

The whole street was full of cafés and bars and restaurants, with everyone sitting at tables outside and enjoying the evening with friends. Damian and I returned there many days and nights for lunch and dinner and had so much fun!

The Museum of Broken Relationships

There were two specific museums we went to that I thought it would be fun to call out. The first was The Museum of Broken Relationships. It is a really unique museum that has “artifacts” from broken relationships (mostly romantic, but some familial), along with stories about those artifacts. There have been traveling exhibits around the world, but there’s only a permanent museum in Zagreb and in Los Angeles.

It was really neat to see all the pieces, and even more interesting to read peoples’ stories (it reminded me a bit of the @humansofnewyork project), and made for a somewhat somber experience. They had an area where you could leave your own confessions, which was neat too (I didn’t leave any because I was #overstimulated).

Museum of Illusions

On one of our last days Damian and I decided to go to the Museum of Illusions. It wasn’t too big and was really fun, especially for two nerds like us! And, besides geek-ing out (they had fun rooms, but also lots of logic puzzles to do), going to the museum was a great way to escape the afternoon heat!

Croatia? Check! So, what’s next?

Well, after Zadar and Zagreb, our three weeks in Croatia had just flown by, but we had been able to do so much, from the old historic town of Dubrovnik, to beach time in Hvar to national parks at Krka in Plitvice. We were now off to spend ten days in Norway, a completely different experience that I can’t wait to write more about (hopefully) soon!