Day 24 – Zagreb

Today we travelled to Zagreb and it took most of the day. Our train was at elevenish so we got up and packed our things at a leisurely pace returning our key to the jolly, plump landlord.

As we walked to the station we picked up breakfast (pain au chocolat) and another piece of yummy chocolate cake for the journey.

The Croatians are obviously proud of the Split-Zagreb train as we were greeted and shown to our seats from the platform. We were then informed that a free coffee and sandwich were included in the price of the ticket, which, for us, was only about 70p anyway!

The train took 5 1/2 hours but the scenery was great! Sweeping valleys, huge mountains and evergreen forests. As we got further north the scenery got greener and greener – in places it could have been England. We also saw the Danube in all its blue glory against the lush countryside.

The coffee was interesting. A Nescafe instant coffee with powdered milk and sugar all mixed into the sachet. For someone who likes his coffee black with no sugar it was a little disgusting to say the least. Free though!

The sandwich was fine – we even got a choice of ham or cheese. Digestion was not aided however by the fact that the train was of the tilting variety but it was nice nonetheless. Britain really has a lot to learn about public transport and I am surprised to say that it need look no further than Croatia for an example of how to do it properly.

We arrived at Zagreb at about 4.30 and made our way to our hotel. A 15-minute walk into the business district and we found our hotel. It is very nice – 2/3-stars again with breakfast and free internet - not bad at all! And we can stay an extra night!

We headed into Zagreb to book our Budapest train – 7.20am so an early start but it takes 7 hours so we don’t want to leave it too late.

Dinner was pizza (again) -  a giant seafood one for me and a ham and paprika one for Emma. With a beer and a coke the bill came to 84 Kuna (about 8 pounds)!

We then returned to our nice air-conditioned room for a good night’s sleep.