After departing from the Bodensee around noon, we took a long 6 and a half hour drive with only minor breaks and stayed in a small town outside of Ljubiliana, Slovenia. We had a pizza in a local pizzeria (a very good pizza, actually…) and went to bed, as the long drive through neverending rain tired us all. We packed our backpacks again the next morning and decided to have a stop in Ljubljana and took a long walk along the Ljubiljanica. We’ve been to this lovely city before, but again, we really liked the vibe of Slovenia’s capital.

A two hour ride later, we arrived in our Airbnb in the outskirts of Zagreb. I’m not going to lie, but the neighbourhood would probably be close to what you have in mind when you think about “the outskirts of Zagreb”. The place itself was lovely though, with all the ammenities you’d need for a short 2 night stay. We stocked up the fridge and took a walk through the area and went playground hopping (..that certainly sounds fancier than it was..) with the kids.

The next day we went into town with no particular target in mind. Zagreb is fairly compact and can be discovered by feet easily. We walked through the cathedral, which apparently was closed for renovations, and the same was valid for the Zagreb funicular, which remains closed until 2026 for renovations. This cable railway system is connecting the upper town with the lower town and with just 66 metres in length it makes it one of the shortest public transport systems in the entire world.

These closures didn’t kill our mood though. We bought fruit from the local “Dolac Market” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolac_Market) and walked to the botanical gardens (https://botanickivrt.biol.pmf.hr/en ), where we spent quite some time wondering around, watching turtles and a great variety of plants. Until the sky would open again… the days before it already had plenty of water from above, and the afternoon turned out to be even wetter. I picked the short straw, went back to the parking garage, took the car and picked up Sarah and the kids, as it was lashing down. What’s best to do when it’s rainy? Correct, visit a brewery… which is exactly what we did. The garden brewery (https://thegarden.hr/) has a great tap room and and even nicer garden, which will need another visit when the weather is a little more favorable.

As it continued to rain, we decided to head back to our appartment, watched a movie and cooked some food. In previous city trips, before the current journey, we always tried to get the maximum out of every place we visited, but we started to realise, that the current way of travelling, the constantly changing sceneries and perspectives would require some occasional downtime, independent of the time you might have spent at a certain place.