Author Archives: Barbara

Graz- Day 2

It is afternoon and we are sitting in a cafe away from the city center. There must be 200,000 people here because we just went along with the crowd. We took the funicular to the castle- see pic. And of course took a pic from the highest point overlooking the city. The whole town is in party mode! I have taken pics of the cafe – which is off the beaten path – so you can imagine the rest of the town.

I ordered an Aperol spritzer and Marsha had another pink drink. Both are refreshing. Weather has been nice during the day and cool at night.

Graz, Austria

I don’t have wifi at this hotel so you may get several days at one time.
We boarded an Austrian train early in the am. It had a restaurant car so we decided to have breakfast on the train. See pic of dining car. We both had cream of asparagus soup (see pic) and Marsha had a croissant and I had a roll and butter. The baked good were warm so we enjoyed our breakfast.
As usual we got into Graz and checked into our hotel. We headed for the Old City and went to the tourist info office. They had a pamphlet of self guided walking tours which are very good. We did a couple if them and I took a lot of pics on my camera besides the ones on the phone. The one is a 500 year old double spiral staircase.
We did not realize Graz is having a festival. Everyone is wearing dirndls and lederhosen. Whole families are in traditional dress and there is folk music at several locations in the town. See pic of Marsha and I drinking a local drink. We ordered food from where we were in a courtyard at one of the events. Marsha had a mushroom chili with a dumpling and I had something that had ham, pork, potatoes and other vegetables. There was singing and dancing and everyone seemed to be having a good time. It is like a mini Octoberfest. Tomorrow Graz is expecting 100,000 people to attend the festivities. Marsha and I plan to attend after we see the castle.

Zagreb, Croatia

Today we went to the botanical gardens which are very nice. See pic of pavilion.

We then went to the train station to check in our train to Graz. It took us almost an hour to find the track our train would leave from, but it is an early train and there is only one per day so we wanted to be sure. Then we went to find the river which is opposite from the old city. See pic of river. In the other pics you may be able to see the church steeple – we walked from there. It was beginning to cloud over and start to rain again so the pics may be dark. The fountains are in the middle of a highway. There are many beautiful parks and green spaces in Zagreb.

Eventually we went on the search for dinner so we walked back to the old city. Marsha had mushrooms with Gorgonzola and I had green noodles with Gorgonzola, mushrooms, and ham. We have an early train to Graz, Austria tomorrow so we are home early.

Zagreb, Croatia

We woke up again to overcast skies. It was not raining so we decided to walk to the upper town. During the day we walked the entire city, Upper and lower. Our first stop was the lobby of the fancy hotel which is on the list of recommended sites. There is a pic of one of the cars in the challenge. The lobby was nice, but not a wow. We walked thru the open air market and then went to St Marks church. See pics.

We then went to the Museum of Broken Relationships (for real) and it was really strange. The weather remained cool (55 degrees) and overcast but thankfully no rain.
We went to dinner at the Hansel and Gretel restaurant. They gave us spicy cheese and pâté as an appetizer. Then we had fried cakes with cottage cheese and sour cream. I had deer stew and Marsha had red pepper stew with polenta. We are now home and again deciding what we will do tomorrow ,

Zagreb, Croatia

We got up early to catch our train to Zagreb. It was still raining, but we made it without getting soaked. In Zagreb it was overcast and that damp chill that comes with rainy weather. We checked into the hotel and headed to the center of town and the tourist info office. There are many museums and beautiful buildings in Zagreb. It was getting to be 5:00pm and most museums would be closing. We were also chilly because the air conditioning was on in the train. Where was the air conditioning when it was 100 degrees? We rested in our room until we went out for dinner. As we were walking by one of the hotels there were race cars parked outside. The only thing we could read is that it is some kind if “challenge”. The white car has Dubai Police written on it. See pics.

We continued looking for a restaurant when it started to rain. We went into the first restaurant we saw and it turned out to be great. We had Croatian beer for Gary because today is his birthday. We both had Strukli soup. Strukli is a kind of lasagna made with puff pastry and cottage cheese and for the soup a piece is put in a broth and heated. Marsha had green risotto and I had chicken breast with sautéed vegetables.

It was raining when we left the restaurant so we hope it rains overnight and clears up in the morning. We have decided to do museums tomorrow just in case it is raining.