A little planning and a flight to Zagreb
In Tom’s solo trip to Croatia in 2023, he stayed close to the Adriatic Sea and never made it very far inland. A couple in his group last year had visited Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city, and loved it. After hearing that, Tom put Zagreb on his wish list. He also wanted Cindy to see the country he really enjoyed last year. He started looking for frequent flyer miles bargains for a fall trip and found a two-week round trip to Zagreb. Tom had initially planned an itinerary in Croatia and Slovenia. Cindy studied the map, and noticed how close Budapest was. (Budapest had been on her bucket list ever since Erica of All My Children married a man from Budapest for her fifth marriage and went there on her honeymoon.) Cindy also wanted to avoid renting a car. A plan gradually unfolded for visiting five cities in five countries, with two bus rides and three train rides.
We decided to go carry on for the flight to Zagreb. Carry on can be a bit more of a hassle when you need to change planes. But since we would not be in any one place for very long, if our luggage would be delayed, that could be disaster. We had a connection in Madrid, and that increased the risk of something going wrong. We would have a chance to do laundry on Day 8, so we decided to go carry on.
Our flight from DFW to Zagreb had a 1 hour 45-minute connection in Madrid. We knew we would have to change terminals, then go through passport control (since we were entering the EU in Madrid) and a TSA-like security check. We started to stress a bit about making our connection because our plane from DFW departed almost an hour late. Luckily, the jet stream was favorable for us, and we ended up arriving in Madrid on time. Shortly before landing and using the airplane WiFi, Tom checked the airline app for the gate number for the Zagreb flight. We headed to that gate, but it took a while, including lines at passport control and the security check. When we finally arrived at that gate the flight screen said Zurich. The gate for our flight had changed. The new gate was at the opposite end of the terminal, close to where we had exited the security area. The flight was already boarding by the time we got there, but we made it. Whew! Even a grumpy Cindy was made better with a glass of bubbly and and really great chicken lunch thanks to Iberia Airlines.
Cell phone
Tom’s iPhone allows him to have an e-sim in addition to his regular US sim card. He had never tried that before. For a two-week trip, that makes so much more sense than using a US plan. Our AT&T plan is rather expensive and charged by the day. For $22 for the entire trip, Tom had a French phone number for unlimited calls and 20GB of data. He only used 3 GB the entire trip. His e-sim plan did not allow any texts, though. That caused one unexpected limitation, which is that he could not send or receive texts from other iPhone users after he changed his cell phone setting to his e-sim. There may have been a way to change settings to overcome that, but most of the suggestions on the web indicated that you need to connect to your US phone number briefly to change settings. Not gonna take that risk! The e-sim worked well, and he made a number of phone calls (including to the US) without any problems.
One other bonus of having so much data in the e-sim plan was that Cindy could use her phone with a hotspot from Tom for searching restaurants and walking routes. She took her AT&T sim card out of her ancient iPhone (7 SE. It’s so small that it often receives comments going through airport security.) before leaving DFW so there was no chance of accidentally connecting to roaming in Europe.
Zagreb
We arrived in Zagreb on a Tuesday at 7pm. A car service met us at the Arrivals Hall and dropped us off about a block from our hotel. We’ve learned to hire a car to meet us at our first location. Jet lag is bad enough, but combine jet lag and an unfamiliar location and it can end badly. A driver meeting us is only a bit more expensive than an Uber (but granted much more expensive than public transportation) and gets us where we need to be without mishap.
The hotel was right on the main square, in the middle of an extensive pedestrian-only zone. The hotel was nothing spectacular, but we picked it due to the location. The main square is huge, with long blue trams constantly coming and going. After a good night’s sleep and a terrific hotel breakfast, we met our guide at the horse statue at the main square for our two-hour walking tour. The good news-we were the only people for the tour, so we ended up with a private tour for the price of a group tour. Vid was our guide. He’s a twenty something native of Zagreb who does these tours in five different languages! Just before noon, we arrived at a tower with a large crowd gathered below. He told us to look up at a cannon pointed out a window at the top. Local schoolchildren started counting down (in Croatian), and BOOM! The cannon fired and everyone cheered. Then a man opened the window next to the cannon and waved to the crowd. This happens every day at exactly noon. Our guide lamented it was the best job in all of Croatia.
Dinner that night was in the Upper Town. Our meal was excellent. Shortly after we were seated, a couple (tourists) at a nearby table got up and left. Amazingly, the food they left behind was more food than Cindy and I had for our entire meal. The waiter said that happens a lot, especially with the Asians traveling in the area as they don’t expect the portions to be so large and the food to be so inexpensive.
After breakfast at the hotel Thursday morning, we boarded the number 6 tram just steps from the hotel. Five stops later, we were at the Zagreb bus station. We were taking a Flixbus for two hours to Maribor, Slovenia. The bus stopped at the border crossing, and the driver left the bus. He came back about five minutes later and announced everyone needed to leave the bus for document checks. It is interesting that both Croatia and Slovenia are in the EU with freedom to cross borders, yet we had to take 20 minutes so they could check everyone’s passport.
Later another guide on our trip explained that Croatia had earned a reputation for being extra zealous about goods and people moving between countries, so other countries were starting to check accordingly.
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