Zagreb; Saturday, 26 July, 2014

I woke a few minutes before my alarm was set to go off, which at least meant I wasn’t woken by the alarm, but did still mean having to try and function at 6am on a Saturday morning. I checked out of the hotel and headed over to the terminal building to check-in in and wait for my flight.

An uneventful flight later, and 10 minutes earlier than scheduled, we touched down in Zagreb and after a speedy journey through the airport I found myself on the shuttle bus into town. From the bus station it was a pretty humid and sultry 20 minute walk to the hotel where I checked in and went to my room where the air-conditioning had already been set to a beautiful arctic level.

Bags dropped off I headed out into town, initially just intending on going for a wander as I hadn’t really read that much up on the city. However, when I got to the main square it was just in time to catch the free land train tour round the southern edge of the city centre so I was able to see quite a bit from there.

Back in the main square I then saw an advert for the Zagreb Eye, based at the top of the tallest office tower off the square, so I took the lift up to the viewing platform for some stunning views over the city.

Back down at ground level I wandered over to the Cathedral and had a look round there. As I was coming out of the cathedral the sightseeing tour bus arrived for the 4pm tour so I decided to jump on that and take in some more of the sights of the city.

By the time the tour got back to the cathedral it was almost 6, so I decided to hunt down some food as I suddenly realised that I hadn’t eaten anything since a not particularly filling breakfast on the plane 9 hours earlier.

Sated from dinner, the last part of which was accompanied by a spectacular electric storm, I had started to head back to the hotel, a journey which took quite a bit longer than expected as on a couple of occasions I had to dive for cover as the rain tried to pour down, but kept failing.

Eventually, a few minutes after I got back to the hotel the skies did finally properly open and absolutely chucked it down for more than an hour, by the end of which I was happily ensconced in the hotel bar for the evening.