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Hey everyone,
Well we're on to our third stop of the tour now: Zagreb in Croatia. We had been told that the city is really nice, but quite small, so we're only staying for 2 nights in the hostel.
We arrived late on the Wednesday evening after a 7 hour train journey from Belgrade. The journey wasn't too bad considering the duration, and we were in a cabin again so there was plenty of space. The walk from the train station to our hostel took about 10 minutes and led us through a few of the more picturesque areas of the city, to Ban Jelačić Square, which our hostel sat on the edge of. The hostel was nice enough: only half full, with a few Candians and Americans, but our room smelt faintly of feet. We think the culprit may have been an American we were sharing the room with, but we got talking to him later on and found out he is about to go on a week-long train journey to Mongolia. We think he is the type of hardcore traveller for whom hygiene is an afterthought.
As it was getting quite late, we dumped all of our stuff and headed out for something to eat at a local pizza parlour, took a quick look around the square, then headed to bed.
The next morning we were up bright and early, to make the most of our only full day in the city. The weather seemed nice enough from our window, but when we got outside we realised it was freezing cold. The hostel had been kind enough to let us borrow a guidebook with 2 walking routes around the city, so we set off on the first one in the morning. We went in to Zagreb catherdral, which is the first church we had seem that is similar in design to anything we had seen in Britain, then on to an old town gate, the name of which I forget, that burnt down in the 17th century, leaving only a picture of Christ and the Madonna untouched. The picture still stands there as part of a shrine under the gate.
We wandered on taking in a couple more churches and walking past the museum of technology - holding an exhibit on Nicola Tesla - which was closed unfortunately. We later found out that all the museums in the city were shut on Mondays, which wasn't ideal, but we went back to the hostel for lunch before heading on the second walk in the afternoon.
This route was slightly shorter, and took us back to the train station, past many museums and the botanical gardens. All of them were closed, but the walk was nice enough regardless.
In the evening we headed out for something to eat at a local restaurant. Many of the restaurants were Italian, but as Italy is just across the Adriatic we presumed this to be local cuisine anyway. Afterwards we headed back to the hostel and got to bed before the journey to Budapest on Tuesday morning.
The train journey took 6 hours, which was shorter than we have been used to so it flew by. Over half of the journey took us alongside Lake Balaton, which is huge, and gave us some nice views to pass the time.
We arrived in Budapest at about 6 O'clock and took the tube to our hostel. We are here for 3 days and there seems to be loads to do, so our next update should be quite big.
Keep in touch, Alan and Amy x
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