So we were told that we needed to go to Croatia by the MA35 people to renew our passport stamps. We were thinking “Croatia, isn’t that like the war zone place?”. But that was soooo 10 years ago apparently. 
Here we are at the boarder documenting our strange trip that required us to leave Austria, travel through Slovenia (Slovenia wasn’t good enough because it was an EU country) and into a non-EU Croatia. Just to get some stamps for our passports.
The “Old City” of Zagreb was quite nice. Even though it was dreary things had a very old Europe feel.
Whenever you’re looking for something interesting and free to do, go to a Church and take in the history/art.
Oliver wasn’t too thrilled, but he didn’t complain too much unless you stood still for too long.
Outside the church there were 4 gold angel statues surrounding a large spire in the middle of a fountain. But more importantly, there were birds that some old lady was feeding. Elora took care of the bird problem pretty quickly.
We found this place across the street from the Church. It looked like a little hole in the wall Italian restaurant. (when in doubt what to eat, choose Italian if the country you’re in is close to Italy – plus if you don’t speak the language in that country, Italian food is mostly called the same thing in all European languages – spaghetti is still spaghetti, bolegnese is still belegnese…) The food was very good. They didn’t have kids meals, and were morally oppposed to allowing us to order Penne with Bolegnese sauce for Elora (even though they had Spaghetti w/ Bolegnese), so she insisted she wanted Penne with Pesto. She was like most people, where she liked it until the Pesto just became too much… you can only eat so much Pesto/Pasta without something else thrown in.
Outside of the Old City, on the other hand things were a little more run down. We stayed in a nice western hotel closer to the highway and the airport but when driving from the old city to the “new city” it was pretty depressing. We actually saw a few gutted, empty structures that were nothing more than skeletons. Victims of fire or war? It made you feel a little sad. But some of this could have been the fact that the weather was so dreary outside and all the plants were dormant.
