Croatia

I had to work over two Slovak bank holidays in the past few weeks, so I was allowed to take the days off this past weekend, which we used for a mini-vacation. Rain was in the forecast for our chosen destinations, Zagreb, Croatia and Bled, Slovenia, but we decided to take our chances. It's always a gamble with weather. Fortunately, since we've been in Europe, we've been very lucky with the weather, specifically in Dublin and Italy. This weekend, our luck ran out. We didn't let it keep us down and moved ahead with our planned itinerary.

We drove the little over 4 hours to Zagreb after work in our rented automatic transmission (of course) Skoda and arrived at the Regent Esplanade at around 10:30. The hotel is a landmark in the city and was a stop for the Orient Express. It has classy, traditional style, with just the right amount of modern upgrades. Since rain was predicted for our three night stay, we wanted to make sure we were staying somewhere nice and comfortable since we potentially would be spending a lot of time inside.

We ended the evening with an order of the Struckli Esplanade and a molten chocolate cake from room service. Struckli is a puff pastry filled with ricotta-like cheese. It was delicious.

We awoke to a a dark, gloomy morning with a light drizzle of rain. It was not as bad as we expected, so we headed out for the day to see Zagreb. Our first stop was the Dolac Market. We love the markets in Europe. This one was pretty good. We walked by the cathedral, which was nice. It started to rain a little harder, so we ducked inside Korcula, a restaurant that came highly recommended from TimeOut, for a seafood lunch, in the style of the Croatian Dalmatian coast. We had the Korcula Platter which included octopus, squid, fish, risotto, swiss chard, and char-grilled potatoes. Everything was pretty good. It was a long lunch, but we were more than happy to stay inside while it was pouring outside.

We braved the downpour for a little while, but after about an hour, it really started to come down. Even with our raincoats and umbrellas, we were soaked, and longed for our hotel room. We spent the rest of the afternoon resting inside in the warmth of the Regent Esplanade until about 6:30, when we headed to the brand new Contemporary Art Museum. The building was super cool and the art was pretty interesting. There was way too much male frontal nudity for my tastes, including an installation which showed several views of hidden cameras in a bathhouse. After our sausage appetizer, we headed out for some dinner.

We had an exceptional meal at Trilogija, which was recommended to us by the hotel. Mushrooms are great in Croatia right now because of all the rain, so we started with a mushroom carpaccio salad and then followed it with a mushroom risotto. Our entree was a perfectly cooked beef filet with a side of roasted tomatoes and potatoes. Dessert was this chocolate nougat thing I liked better than Jenn.

After heading back to the hotel, I checked on the computer and though I had set Slingbox to record the Horns game, ESPN chose the Ohio State game for regional coverage. This makes no sense to me because Texas is closer to New Orleans than the Big 10 schools, but whatever. I saw online elsewhere that UCLA absolutely drilled Texas. This brought back memories of 66-3 from my freshman year. It looked like the offense continued their sloppiness and carelessness with the ball that they displayed in the Tech game a week ago. Oh well. This is a rebuilding year anyway.