See all posts from the Croatia series Here

Earlier this month I visited Croatia and hired a car to do a road trip through Croatia. I flew into Zadar Airport, and my first stop would be driving to Zagreb, Croatia’s capital city, about 180 miles north of the airport.

Zadar Airport, one of the smallest airports I’ve been to, the plane pulled up right outside the customs entrance

Unfortunately, I would only have one afternoon to visit Zagreb as I hadn’t booked a hotel there and so would have to drive to Plitvice Lakes another 90 or so miles back south again to spend my first night. However, I still wanted to visit Zagreb – in particular the old town area.

My trusty hire car

Satnav Ready!

I arrived, parked up, and immediately started walking in completely the wrong direction. This meant far from spending my short amount of time there visiting the Old Town, I spent about 40 mins walking through some of the doggiest areas of Zagreb. When I finally got pointed in the right direction towards the old town, the difference was pretty drastic!

I walked through Kaptol Square, up towards St Mark’s Square where the stunning St Mark’s Church is. The roof of the church is amazing, decorated with the coat of arms of Zagreb (white castle on red background) and Triune Kingdom of Croatia, Slavonia and Dalmatia. The church was originally built in the 13th Century, reconstructed in the 14th century, and restored again in the early 20th century.

After that it was a quick trip to look at the “World’s Shortest Funicular Railway” (just 66 metres long), originally built in 1890 and operational since 1893.

Unfortunately it was then time to move on and begin my journey to Plitvice Lakes. Didn’t even have time for a drink (not that I would have been able to anyway thanks to Croatia 0% drink drive limit!)

(Next post in this series: Museum of the Croatian War of Independence, Turanj, Croatia)