Christmas Break Part 3: Croatia & Vienna

I have been wanting to visit Croatia for a long time, so when Steph and I bought out Eurail tickets that included Croatia, I got super excited about it!  We planned to see Zagreb, the Plitvice Lakes and Split.  After crossing all of the really creepy border patrol on the train, we got to our hostel in Zagreb and immediately knew we were going to like the place.  Within ten minutes of arriving, we made plans to go out with other people who were in the hostel.  We checked in, dropped our stuff off and turned right around to get into some taxis to go to a lake/going out area just outside of the city.  We got there only to find that everything was closing.  It happened to be a Sunday night and we didn't exactly take that into account.  So finally, after flagging down new taxis to take us back to the hostel, we went back and made plans to do the free walking tour of the city together in the morning.

Around Zagreb

Zagreb's outdoor market

We got up and went to the center to do the tour.  The kid who gave us the tour was probably about our age, but he knew a lot about his city.  He told us that he started doing the free tours because some of his couchsurfers mentioned that he gave a great tour of the city.  He took us through the streets of Zagreb, showing us all of the ins and outs.  We rode the funicular that was built in 1890 and took 55 seconds to make the journey uphill.  The ride was luckily free because of the holiday season.  He pointed out sites like the important churches, the outdoor market, the statue of St. George, the Museum of Broken Relationships, the solar system that runs throughout the whole city that is made to scale and many other things.  One interesting fact that I learned on this tour was that the tie was actually invented in Croatia.  You don't normally think about where things are invented, but now I will always have this little piece of trivia to carry with me about the tie.

New Year's Eve dinner with some of the hostelmates
We had almost all English speaking countries represented:
 USA, England, Australia, Wales, Canada & South Africa + a French couple

We rang in the new year in Zagreb with our new hostel friends.  We got a delicious dinner at one of the places our tour guide recommended to us and then hung out in the hostel while getting ready to go out. By the end, we all ended up getting split up because there we so many people out in the main square, but we had a great time.  This was my first time being in a big capital city for New Year's Eve and the atmosphere was insane!  It is definitely an experience that I won't forget!

Then, after spending a day in the hostel recovering from New Year's Eve eating salads & sandwiches and watching movies all day long because everything was closed, Steph and I went to the Plitvice Lakes National Park.  This place is a MUST SEE if you are in Croatia.  It is a network of thousands of small lakes and waterfalls all over the place.  We spent all day wandering around on the bridges, taking pictures and staring in awe at the beauty of it.  It also took us a while to get through because some parts were pretty icy, overflowing and a little bit dangerous, but we took the risk and kept going because it was worth it just to turn the corner and see a whole new area of beautiful waterfalls and clear blue/green water in front of you.

Plitvice National Park

After our stay in Zagreb, we headed to the coastal city of Split.  We actually decided last minute to go there because we were trying to decide between two different cities to visit.  It was refreshing to get to Split because the temperature was a lot higher than everywhere else had been on the trip.  We got to our hostel and it's amazing that we even left it to see anything in the city.  The girl working informed us that we had our own room with our own bathroom and a TV screen that had access to 4,000 different movies and TV series.  We definitely took advantage of that and watched a couple of movies and a couple episodes of How I Met Your Mother.  

Halfway up our hike to the viewpoint in Split

Anyway, Split was really nice.  It's an ancient city that's built around an old palace.  We spent our two days wandering in and out of the palace walls, getting lost in the streets, checking out the ruins, doing souvenir shopping, eating cevapi, and hiking up to a viewpoint that was totally worth the hike.  We really, really enjoyed Split a lot more than we expected to.  I decided that if I ever come back to Europe for a summer vacation, I want to go back to Croatia and explore the whole Dalmatian coast and islands.

After our two day, warm stay in Split, we hopped on an overnight train back to Zagreb and then changed trains immediately to continue on up to Vienna, Austria.  Vienna was a really nice and very architecturally beautiful city, but by the time we got there we were exhausted from our whole trip.  It's possible that we didn't quite enjoy it as much as we could have, had it been a stop at the beginning of the trip.  It was a little more expensive than the other cities and there was definitely an older feel to it.  Nonetheless, we went out and explored a bit every day!

Mmmm Naschmarkt goodness

We absolutely fell in love with the Naschmarkt.  This is a huge outdoor food market that they have daily.  We walked up and down with our jaws dropped in amazement at the variety of foods that were offered there.  We tried many different pickled & stuffed veggies, dried fruits including coconut, ginger and hibiscus flower, falafel that the vendors fed to us straight from their tongs, different kinds of hummus and fresh fruits & veggies.  We were in foodie heaven there and wanted to go back everyday to buy our snacks.

St. Stephen's Cathedral all lit up inside

Other things we saw in Vienna were the Shönburg Palace, St. Stephen's Cathedral, the outside of many beautiful buildings and one day we got up early and went to a church service to see, or rather hear, the Vienna Boys Choir.  We got really lost on our way to the church, but eventually found it and stood in line for a while so that we could get in standing room only without paying.  It was definitely worth it.  It was very interesting to go to a (Catholic) church service in German, although the priest did speak in English every once in a while.  My favorite part about it was when the Choir ended with Silent Night in German, just like I learned in back in elementary school.  

Rainy Vienna

Overall we had an amazing time on this trip.  We had ups and down, we had cold, rainy days and warm, sunny days.  We met tons of incredible people who helped us along the way and tried some of the most amazing foods that we've ever had before.  We spent lots of money with no regrets because everything we did was worth every penny and the memories will be priceless.  One of the unfortunate things that happened during the trip was that my camera broke while we were in Zagreb, so all of my pictures after the first day are either from my phone or stolen from Steph.  One of the coolest things we did for the trip was prepare a cheat sheet of useful phrases in every language so that we could try to use them to impress the locals.  I think that the Croatians were happy when we walked in a store and said "dobardan" instead of "hello", and the Slovenians were impressed when we said "hvala" instead of 'thank you' when they brought us our food.  Sometimes it's the little things that really count.