Destination Review: Croatia

June 14, 2016 | By Linda Smith

Last month, I got to travel and spend some time in Croatia’s capital city, Zagreb. I stayed at the Esplanade Zagreb Hotel, a historic luxury property that was built in 1925 to provide accommodations for the Orient Express train from Paris and Istanbul. It is located only a few blocks from the center of the city. The property was extremely nice and had a very friendly staff.

Zagreb Cathedral, the tallest building in Croatia

Zagreb is a beautiful city with Austro Hungarian architecture. The city had a lot of interesting side streets to wander through and outdoor cafes to sit at while watching people pass by. For the size of the city, I was amazed at how many museums it had. One that was a little interesting to me was the Museum of Broken Relationships, which now has a traveling exhibition in Los Angeles that opened June 4th and is quite popular.

St. Marks Church with it’s beautiful tiled roof

We went and saw St. Marks Church, a 13th century Gothic church with a colored tile roof. If you are there from April through October, you can see the changing of the guard ceremony outside of the church at noon on Saturdays and Sundays.

Dolac Market

Behind the main square, in the center of town, is the Dolac Market, Zagreb’s main farmers market. It is an open air market with flowers, fruits, vegetables and other items to browse and purchase every morning.  Along with shopping, we also found several very tasty restaurants that we enjoyed.

We took a taxi from the airport to the main part of town and that took around 20 – 30 minutes depending on traffic. The fare is approximately $25.00 USD. The currency is the Croatian Kuna, however, I had no problem spending Euros.

My trip to Croatia was a wonderful experience, and one that I would recommend to others!