Zageb

Today we visited Zagreb. This was mostly to answer an argument. Jane visited it in the mid-seventies with the Italian family she was  au pairing for when she worked in Italy and I visited it in the mid-eighties whilst inter-railing. She remembers a grand hotel on the main square, I remember a tatty, soviet-era city we nicknamed named Zagrim. 

The approach to the centre was indeed pretty grim, however once we were parked, we approached the centre down Tkalčićeva Street (no doubt a winner at Croatian scrabble), the pedestrianised street full of trendy bars. We found the main square and it was nice but nothing too special, so returned to a bar on trendy street for a drink and to see out the light rain. We then had lunch further up the street at an Indian restaurant, where we had a delicious and relatively cheap (€28) lunch. We have both been craving something different and spicy, the opposite of our time in Thailand when we craved and found a Subway cheese and salad sandwich. 

On this street there was also what we think will be a large screen for a fan zone during the World Cup.Under the screen were all the groups and first round matches - by coincidence England’s first game is against Croatia. Maybe that’s why people didn’t seem to let us in much on the roads there. 

We wandered round a bit longer but the rain persisted, so we decided to return home. The drive - on Friday afternoon so we should have known better - had some holdups on the main A2. Whilst taking a call from Harvey we turned off the A2 too early only to hit equally bad traffic, where we allowed the satnav to direct us back on the the A2 again further up. Maybe it was a crafty move. Within a kilometre the satnav took us off the A2 again only to do the same trick, bringing us back on the A2 at the next junction. 

The jam did not last long and we were home to setup camp again (we had partly dismantled it to protect it against the rain forecast in the day in Bled). It was a bit soggy underfoot when we returned, but nothing bad, and we are now taking five with a cuppa before we take the dogs for the evening walk. 

We have come to realise that much of our day is structured round the dogs, with feeding, ablutions and walks. Much like with children but with less backchat. 

We have loosely mapped out our final travel time in this region, with the next three locations penciled in, allowing ourselves about a week to meander back to Calais for the 29th June.