Days 40 & 41: Zagreb, Croatia

Most of day 40 was the 6.5 hour train ride from Budapest to Zagreb. Not a very exciting day but the scenery was nice.  

Budapest Train Station

 Balaton, a large lake we passed on the train for several kilometers. We did not see any toxic sludge from the recent spill near an aluminum processing facility, but we passed about 30 km from it.

Nickolai Tesla was born in Croatia and there is a street named after him.

Day 41

We spent the day in Zagreb. Yesterday (Oct 8th) was Croatia's Independence Day so there was a lot going on in the center of the city. After spending the day wandering around the city, looking at buildings and visiting a museum we ended the day, sitting outside, at a cafe on one of the main streets. I love to people watch, especially in other cultures. The fashion trend we noticed today was that apparently it's cool to tuck your jeans into your high tops. After getting back to our hotel, we stayed up late to Skype into Chuck's birthday party. It was great to get to see some friends for a couple of minutes! Hope everyone had a great time! Wish we could have been there in person. 

Zagreb, near the train station.

I love when we stumble upon festivals! These kids were doing some traditional Croatian dancing. It involved lots of spinning and lots of running around in circles.

Performer at the festival. Later he played Stairway to Heaven.

Open-air market at Dolac.

We weren't really sure what this building was; the map we had was in Croatian and not very informative. Every couple of minutes the two guards would walk to the end of the building and back to their positions. I just googled it, and apparently this is St. Mark's Church and the roof is made of tiles, not legos. I'm not sure what purpose the guards serve.

Like most cities we've been to, Zagreb has a big, beautiful cathedral complete with scaffolding.

The Stone Gate.

This is the last of the four original gateways to the city. It is also a very popular place to pray and light candles. Based on our map, we weren't sure why. I just looked this up too and it has something to do with a photo of Mary that was found, undamaged, after a big fire near the gate.

This wall stretched for what seemed like forever. Each section of the wall had been painted by different people. Some were cool, some not so much. I really liked the wall; it was a nice change from the typical graffiti that we've seen.