Zipping Through Zagreb

Zagreb, the largest city in Croatia, just happened to be the start of my vacation. This beautiful city also happens to be the capital of Croatia. The town is split in half by a hill and connected by a funicular and a tunnel system. The parts of the town are not surprisingly called the upper and lower town. The funicular is one of the shortest funiculars in the world.

The tunnels were used in World War II, but the weirdest thing about them is that they have now added bathrooms in them?!?!

The first cathedral that we went in was the great Zagreb Cathedral. The other, smaller, but personally more beautiful one, was the St. Mark’s Church (I know it sounds like it is in Venice, but it is actually in Zagreb). Bigger doesn’t always mean better, but they were so hard to compare (see if you want to compare them).

The stonework on the great Zagreb Cathedral was so intricate that it would blow your mind! Even more impressive was to be able to build what is still the tallest building in Croatia back in 1217.

St. Mark’s Church had a roof made of brightly colored tiles that made it almost look like the roof was made of beautifully colored legos forming a scheme that displays the coat of arms of Zagreb (the white castle on the red background).

When we got to Zagreb we saw huge screens set up in the main square. We did not know why until we saw stalls selling Croatia World Cup jerseys. When I saw this, I thought “that’s it, Croatia is playing in the World Cup” (it turns out Croatia was doing a lot more than playing, they pretty much dominated the tournament). I even went to one of the stalls and bought a jersey as a souvenir. I got Luka Modrić‘s Croatia World Cup jersey (even though his regular team is Real Madrid). Mom did not think that I would get much use out of it, but Croatia just kept winning so I used it a ton (I wore it for every single game). When we were back at home watching the Croatia versus Russia game, the announcers showed a view of people in the Zagreb main square cheering, staring at the huge screens, and some were even holding torches.

Zagreb was a completely amazing start to an epic vacation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!