Budapest, Day 2: Tourists in the Rain

Posted on September 13, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 19th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Monday, June 30

We begin Day 2 in the rain, but still have to stop to see the beautiful manhole covers. I know there are plain-jane ones in these countries we travel in, and perhaps this is just putting on the dog for the tourists, but I love the detail and the signifier that You are not in America.

Always on the lookout for interesting pattern-whether it be on a rainy sidewalk or a window or a manhole cover.

We switched trains somewhere underground, finding our way to the beginning of the walk.

No, I don’t know why I took picture of all the trains we rode on that day, but there you are.We made our way to the beginning of our Rick Steves’ Pest Town Center Walk, so we get off at Vorosmarty Ter metro stop and arrive in a large square with a giant soccer ball on a pedestal. The shops are just beginning to open, but we’re headed for the Danube Promenade. I read off Steves’ bon mots as we scurry by famous shops, shopping streets and buildings.

We pass by the Bard on our way to other sights.

The view across the Danube to Buda, and above that, the bas relief map that tells us what we are seeing.

We found the Little Princess, wearing a jester hat. I made Dave pose for the photo for about 3 minutes, trying to get the exposure right. I came home and Photoshopped it alive, so you can see how everyone touches the statue’s knee, a common occurence with statues around the world: a body part rubbed shiny by the visitors.

I’m shaking the hand of this statue, although in reality, she’s reaching for the dog’s ball. I even have one more late one night, of Dave shaking some other statue’s hand. We always get a kick out of English, as translated by the locals. Thanks God, it’ Happy Hours. Our favorite one was in Italy, when the owner of the hotel was trying to describe the newest building addition to the old restaurant, and called it their “outhouse.” We didn’t know whether to tell them that they’d used a term for an outdoor latrine to describe the wing of the hotel where our rooms were, or not. I think we mentioned it briefly, knowing that nothing would change.

A big concert hall: the Pesti Vigado. We watched tons of videos about how to get tickets to concerts and to the all-famous baths, but ended up doing nothing but the usual. I think those are things that require a lot of foresight, or a local to show you around.

The famous McDonald’s–the first McDonald’s behind the Iron Curtain, during Communist times. Apparently when it opened, lines stretched around the block to get a taste of the West.

Still soccer madness going on.

First and only traditional dress seen in Budapest.

The facade of the “Parisian Courtyard,” a “grand, hidden gallery with delicate woodwork, fine mosaics and a stained glass dome,” which we didn’t see because it was all locked up. We amble to the next stopping place, admiring even this touch of beauty in a cement windowbox.

The walk takes up this way, and I do a double take–it’s the sweet little plaza with the book fountain from yesterday evening. I love it when our paths cross again. As a tourist (and probably readers of travel blogs) eyes can glaze over at all the new! fabulous! historical! sites, so when you re-visit something, there’s a lovely frisson of happiness: “I know this place. I am not lost. I am “getting” Budapest!”

We find out it is called Egyetem Ter, or University Square. One building on this street houses the law school for ELTE, and at 30,000 students, it’s one of the biggest universities in this city. (ELTE stands for Eotvos Lorand Technical University, named for an influential physicist. I love Rick Steves’ books.)

We peek inside one of the university buildings bordering this street and find this lovely courtyard. Dave reaches for my camera and the screen goes dark. “WHAT??” Now two cameras are out of whack?!? I take it back from him, and try a few buttons, and end up pressing the “Display” button at the bottom of the camera. The screen comes to light.

Dave looks at me. “That’s all?” he says. He pulls out his supposedly broken camera, turns it on, and presses the Display button. Well, la-dee-da! Camera fixed.

I start laughing, asking “You mean you didn’t try that before?” He shakes his head no, and I giggle some more. “Glad to help you out,” I say, feeling dumb that I hadn’t thought to try it. But I just took his word for How Things Were. Glad we are back in business with two cameras. Interesting door and window in a round iron facade. We wonder if it’s not some sort of night club. Finally! We’ve arrived at Market Hall. It’s still sort of gray and rainy, but the roof is full of those little tiles like the church on the hill and I’m sure in the sunlight, it would be grand. I’d said all along I wanted to buy a matryoshka when we got to Market Hall, one of those nesting dolls. We walked in–and started gawking and staring. It’s just such a huge scale with so many shops, most selling paprika, like the ones below: Rick Steves said to head upstairs for lunch, so we do.We wandered and wiggled our way through the crush, finally stopping at the last stall on the upper hall. I ordered roast chicken and a version of pickled cabbage, which I call rotkohl, but it goes by other names as well. It was amazing. I had no idea what any of the Hungarian words said, so I just pointed at the array of food, and they served it up (although it took some time to get to the front of the line.)

Dave got some goulash, and while it looks just like any other regular soup–the flavor was also incredibly delicious. We ended up talking to four British tourists who shared our wobbly benches and table, and got their traveling stories. They said they’d been there before and knew to come to this stand. So if you are going there, face the hall on the upper level at the back, head down the right-hand side and eat at the last stall.

Snacks to have on the way out in order to console me, because there wasn’t one matryoshka that didn’t look like it had been made in China. . . or looked like Dolly Parton, with huge eyelashes and tons of paint/make-up; they all were over-produced, mass-produced. I was so sad, for that’s what I’d been hoping to get here on our trip for my souvenir. Now. . . nothing.

Back outside we admire the buildings surrounding the square.We found our way to a tram stop, found the right tram and headed home to Palazzo Zichy Hotel for a break.

Buda and Pest: Budapest–Day 1

Posted on September 12, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 18th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Sunday, June 29

We start this day with breakfast, which is the lower level, but open to the main floor. This is looking down into the eating area. What follows are all the different stations and possibilities for breakfast.

Breakfast Salad

Orange juicing station

Fruits with Nuts/Seeds/Raisins for topping

Paprika, Salt and Pepper

Usually the breakfast area was popping, but this shot is from the last morning, when we left to the airport early.

Our breakfast. We learned to use a roll basket to bring our choices to the table. Of course, we normally have this kind of spread at home. Right.

Fruit detail. We thought the addition of cherries was unique.

Detail, front door of our hotel

Budapest is basically two cities: Buda and Pest, but were joined ages and ages ago. The basic rule is Buda is on the hill, and Pest is on the flats. We decided to explore St. Matthias Church on Castle Hill, since it was Sunday, and also because the sun was still out. We were always cognizant of the weather reports.

We walked up to the Metro stop closest to our hotel (we learned a short cut on the last day–of course) and purchase our 72-hours transit pass, good for buses and Metro and whatever.

Tile in the Fraz Josef Metro Stop.

Outside the Metro station: a blind zebra-ed elephant (above) and a tribute to Raoul Wallenberg (below).We found our way to Bus #16, which took us to the top of the hill, along with HORDES of other tourists. The tourist industry is alive and well here.

Looking down towards Pest, situated across the Danube River. I have a fond attachment to that river, as it rolls through Austria as well, the very first place where Dave and I traveled (on our honeymoon). I still remember walking down to the river one night from our little bed and breakfast, slipping off my sandals and dipping my feet into the chilly water. As the famous saying goes, you never step foot in the same river twice, and there’s been a lot of rivers since that moment years ago.

This area is known as the Fisherman’s Bastion, as fishermen used to guard this area above the fish market just below during the Middle Ages, however all these current structures date from the 1896 reconstruction efforts. The church still wasn’t open so we explored the small plaza next to St. Matthias’ church, with these bas reliefs at the base of the equestrian statue. The ornately tiled roof reminded me of the one on St. Mark’s Church in Zagreb, but I couldn’t find any information linking the two. Here’s a closeup from the internet:

The shot from below, those stairs leading up to the Fisherman’s Bastion.

We walk around the area of the church, noticing this beautiful gate with a hideous Lock of Love attached (maybe it’s a new form of graffiti?).

We decide to walk around the upper Buda area while waiting for the church, and noticed this building also had a tiled roof.

This is the Turul Bird, a mythical bird of Magyar folktales, which supposedly led the Hungarian migrations “from the steppes of Central Asia in the ninth century. He dropped his sword. . . indicating that this was to be the permanent home of the Magyar people. . . and remains a symobl of Hungarian pride.” This is at the entrance into the Royal Palace plaza on the Danube side, near this gate: A mildly hot day, we walked to the very end of the upper area near the Royal Palace (below, home to several museums which we didn’t see) to a long promontory which gives a great views of Pest, the flatland city. Apparently, this hill is “considered one of the last foothills of the Alps” so everything before is a part of the “Great Hungarian Plain.” (quotes from our Rick Steves’ guidebook) That bridge to the left is the Chain Bridge, which we’ll walk on on our last day.

We walked back up to the church on the other side, with views into those foothills. Along the way, we looked in all the stalls for souvenirs, for we are Departure-Day-minus-3 and we have almost no souvenirs from this trip, which causes me great stress, and Dave, none at all. But all of the little stalls seemed to be stocked with stuff we’d never want to take home, like kerchiefs from China, straw hats and overly made-up dolls (think: Dolly Parton) in cheap native costuming. So we settled for sharing a soda, while letting the breeze float around us, cooling us off.

In we go. But first, a little story about how we became compatible tourists. It all started in a hilltown in Italy when we shared one camera. I’d stop to take a picture of every detail, doorknob, post box then hand it over to Dave, who was muttering about how long I took and then would stand at the edge of whatever view sight there was and take landscape photo after landscape photo, the camera held out at arms length, then would swing the camera around on the strap when he was walking somewhere, which gave me hysteria, as I imagined the camera going flying across some cobblestone street and crushed by a car. We were a good team, if you consider the subject of the photos, but in reality, sharing one camera became like sharing one toothbrush. Not advisible for marital harmony. So we bought two and touristed happily ever after.

Until this morning when somehow, some way, we discovered that Dave’s camera doesn’t work. It can take photos through the view finder, but we have come to depend on the use of our articulating screens to capture what we see. I decide to swap him, seeing if I can go old-school and use the view finder, but I can tell, like so much else of our modern life, that I am completely acclimated to the swing out screen and this will be a challenge, esp. for close-ups and detail shots, which are my favorite thing to take. He also is swinging my camera around by the strap, which as mentioned before, completely freaks me out.

So as a result, nearly all of the excellent photos below are taken by Dave, except for when he’d come and find me and I’d use it for a while. I’m also still recovering from Traveling with the Relatives, so I can’t say I was a great contributor to a harmonious day. So it was good to be in a church with lots of gorgeous space and rich, decorative surfaces to distract and mellow out. This was a beautiful place. Enjoy the photos:

Notice the small church she holds.

I love this off-center round window.

Time heals all wounds and so does lunch, even if it is just a crisp, oh-so-deliciously-chilled salad with hearty bread. The camera is still not working and Dave figures it’s something like a loose wire, so he keeps gripping it and flipping it open with force, further causing some alarm. It just won’t be fixed, so we move forward into the rest of the day, with a subway ride over to the Jewish Synagogue.

I was fascinated that I could look all the way down the train, with no doors in between cars.Also known as the Dohany Street Synagogue, this Jewish Synagogue is the biggest in Europe and the second biggest after the synagogue in New York City. It was loosely patterned after the descriptions of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, which explains the two tall towers. Many think this synagogue feels very Catholic-like.

Like many other reconstructions of Budapest, these massive chandeliers are recasts of the originals, the World War II having destroyed what hung here before. The pews are original, as are the nameplates:

After touring the interior, we went outside to the garden behind the synagogue, to see this elegant sculptured Tree of Life by Imre Varga, honoring Holocaust victims. The “willow makes an upside-down menorah, and each of the 4,000 metal leaves is etched with a name….New leaves are added all the time, donated by families of the victims.”The Hebrew inscription reads, “Is there a bigger pain than mine?”

The tour guide passes us off to someone else, who walks us through the Jewish Quarter, where we saw this beautiful facade of a building. We make our way back, then sit on the low stone wall, our energy flagging.

Near us is a red bus with Viking Cruises emblazoned on the side. We watch a lot of PBS television, so waited to see the fabulous-looking people that they depict in their advertisements. We are so tired that sitting on a hard stone wall is a good thing, while waiting to see who shows up. Suddenly the young man bounces out of the bus, holds up a Viking Cruises paddle and waggles it back and forth. A stream of older folks, older than us perhaps, in highly cushioned athletic shoes, baggy pants and wilted expressions slowly makes their way past their guide and onto the bus. We realize that Viking Cruises, while fabulous and helpful, are still in the tour business and they still have to deal with folks like us. We collect ourselves and jump on a tram, two equally wilted tourists riding away from yet another noted tourist attraction.

Dave nudges me after a while. “Let’s get off here.” Here? Why not.

We are in a small square of some anonymity, anchored by this enormous statue at the edge of a building, the soldier caught in motion as he falls, his countrymen and Liberty (?) herself reaching out to catch him–a memorial to those who died in World War I.

And then this fabulous fountain–a book of turning pages.

We’d been discussing the redoing of our front yard at home, and adding a fountain. “This one!” I say. “Let’s add a book fountain!” Tempting.

We find out later that we are in University Square, with terrific little bits of urban art, sculptured lightpoles and a few restaurants, all surrounded by the university buildings.

While we do end up eating at the cafe shown above, we first start on the opposite side of the square, for we always have to check every restaurant in the area before deciding where to eat. But after the friendly English-speaking woman who greeted us sat us down, took off the pristine table cloth to reveal a tattered table, brought us a menu in Hungarian, I bailed and went to the little place above, which promised free Wifi, but we never could get it to work. Never mind.

We share the salad, then the chicken (yes, it’s a bit underdone, but the presentation is lovely).

The stuffed squash’s stuffing was pretty good, but the squash needed a few more minutes in the oven. We were the first ones, typical of English-speaking tourists of a certain age with thick athletic shoes on their feet, so we think we probably surprised the kitchen.

The dessert was great.

We found our way home at the end of that day, climbed the steps to our hotel and crashed.

Next post: We do Pest, still sharing a camera

A Train to Budapest

Posted on September 11, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 17th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Saturday, June 28

We ate another amazing breakfast, sneaking seeded rolls & slices of ham back to our table, then making small sandwiches for the train ride ahead. Good thing we did.

We thought we had paid for a high-speed first-class rail ticket, but apparently there was some problem with the train, or our brains when we made the reservation (don’t think so), or something, so we were we to take Train A and transfer to Train B up the line.

So what was supposed to be a quick 4-hour ride, ended up being a train ride to oblivion. Because we had fancy tickets, we had to kick out some squatters in our seats. By some miracle the numbers matched up and they left.

All the cars had been tagged with graffiti.

This guy came around and banged the wheels before we were boarding–a metallic hammering sound. I have no idea why. Scenes from the trip:

Here’s the wheel banger guy.

We kept stopping and adding more cars. The train would shudder as they’d connect, then we’d slowly take off again. This was repeated several times, until at the above stop, we added cars and then chugged backwards. We had started out with a relatively small train in Zagreb, but when it was time to get off the train in Budapest (nearly an hour late), the train was so long, that those of us in the nice car (which had been at the front at the beginning of the trip) were so far back we had no train walkway to land onto — only train tracks. Instead we walked through several cars to get to where we could see the train platform of sorts — this was patchy asphalt — but worried about being carried back to Zagreb, so hurriedly got off, dragging our suitcases until we made it to the less-patchy asphalt platform. We weren’t in Kansas, Toto, and it felt like it.

Train Station eats. We found out we had landed at the less nicer of the two train stations. No kidding. Now comes the game to change money.

Okey dokey.

We try to hit the bathrooms before figuring out the next transportation hassle, but the bathrooms require coins. Florints, Budapest coins. So we finally find an ATM, get some money, but need change, so we buy our subway tickets (someday we are just going to take a cab, I know it), get the change. Then we take turns watching the luggage while the other person uses the bathroom. Holding our subway tickets in the air, to show the guards at the top of the escalator we are law-abiding tourists, we head down into the mass transit system.

Dave is in front of me by two paces, and as he rounds the corner toward the train, the doors are open and it is waiting. He starts to make a run for it. I holler at the top of my lungs, “Don’t you dare get on that train!” and he freezes just before jumping inside. I can envision him being whisked off to somewhere in Budapest while I am left on the platform to dissolve in tears, weeping as he leaves me behind, no money (he had all the florints), no husband, nothing. Luckily our marriage was saved by his good reflexes, and we caught the next train.

We took the train to a street-level tram (signs on the street, above) and by following the maps I’d printed off at home, make it to our Palace. No kidding. It’s Hotel Palazzo Zichy and it used to be some nobleman’s palace of a home-now-turned-hotel. We loved it.

They speak English! Our room is ready! and this is where the room number is in the hallway: at foot level. Our room is perfectly lovely.

View out our window, into the inner courtyard.

They recommend several restaurants for us, but we are interested in the little bistro just outside our hotel in the square: Matrjoska Bistro.

Citrus-y Bulgar SaladFreshly baked bread, two varieties

Garlic and sour cream — garnish for the borscht

Chilled pumpkin cream soup with dill jelly (detail, below)

BorschtGrilled Catfish and VegetablesAnd to finish off, cake and ice cream (they make the ice cream next door to the bistro, but it is owned by the same people)

Poppyseed cakeVanilla ice cream

(Many of my reviews of Budapest are found on TripAdvisor.)

Bordering this little square are the hotel, a church, a very fancy (apartment?) building, and a more normal apartment building with a pub in the basement. In the dimming light, we take photos of the surroundings.

Count Vichy

More details about him on the hotel’s website.We are too worn out to do anything else, so after these two tasks: eat an amazing meal and explore the square, we walk back across the street to hotel.

Our internet works fine, and I laugh at the translated website: “Perhaps a little maintenance on our own selves is why summertime is such a tonic, even if we don’t know what ails us.” The bistro and this hotel are the tonic tonight, complete with chocolate on our pillows.

Next post: Camera-less Tourist and Castle Hill

Zagreb, Croatioa–Part II

Posted on September 10, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 16th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Friday, June 27

When I say wander around Zagreb, I’m not kidding. Dave turned on his Endomundo app in the morning, and checked it at dinner that night; this is what we saw. Spot #1 is where we met up at the St. Francis Church, #4 is the large overlook, #5 is St. Mark’s Church, and I’m thinking that #8 is the main cathedral. No clue on the rest. Here are a couple of details from walking around:

Apparently the Croatians claim that they invented the tie (cravat) so here’s Dave by a giant tie. No, we didn’t buy it. Actually we bought pathetically little on this trip.

We I did buy some fabric. Well, I went into the store and thought it was a fabric shop, but it was a Home Dec store, and the fabric we’d seen in the window was actually tablecloth fabric. I bought two lengths off of two different bolts of cloth, too tired to figure it all out, so of course, when we got home, they were too small. So I turn them at an angle when I put them on the table.

Loved this scene. The fabric store is “CENTRA” and on our way there, we watched this tourist bus driver become extremely frustrated over the black double-parked car, blocking his way around the circle. When we came out of the fabric shop, they were both gone.

We head towards the Poste to mail the postcards. How to Train Your Dragon 2 was advertised on their small billboards.

What a great looking post office! I also purchased some fancier stamps for decorative uses at home. To get into this, you enter in a main door. On the right is a market, which we also walked through, and on the left was this glorious post office.

We saw fresh corn stands a lot, but it smelled slightly burnt, so we passed on this.

We successfully met up with Anna Clare and Earl (score one for meeting up without cell phones!) and can finally enter the cathedral. The whole name is the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Saintly Kings Stephen and Ladislav, but everyone just calls it the “Cathedral.” Inside the front door is a wall with some interesting script: the Glagolitic alphabet. According to our guide book, it originated in the 9th century, invented by Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Methodius as they worked to translate the Bible into Slavic languages. Their alphabet caught on only in Croatia, and was later adapted in Bulgaria to become the Cyrillic alphabet (still used in “Serbia, Russia and other parts east”). Scenes from the interior:

(View out that open door was the tower of the cloisters.)Although it is incredibly hard to see in this photo, this is a silver altar with a depiction of the Holy Family. Mary is holding a needle and thread, sewing. At this point, Anna Clare begins to feel faint while walking through the cathedral, so we all head out to the benches to rest and to give her a chance to recover. Apparently they had not eaten lunch, and after driving around Croatia these past few days (she has been the only driver), plus a few other stressful experiences, she was exhausted. So we agree to part to give them a chance to go back to their room and rest, and to find some lunch. We’ll meet up again at dinnertime.

One of the challenges of being on the go is drinking enough water, and who can resist buying bottles of water when they deliver not only the water, but a lovely pithy saying to go with it? We share this, and head back up to the Gradec portion of the Upper Town area, because Dave wants to get some more postcards from the Museum of Naive Art.

When we come out, all the church bells are ringing for evening mass. We realize we can now see inside the three churches if we hurry, so we hit the Greek church first. We stand quietly at the back, and take this photo surreptitiously.

Good thing, too, for this nun kept turning and looking at us, watching the open door (below). Not too many showed up for mass, and we moved on to St. Mark’s, in the center plaza.

Exterior of Greek Church.

The sun is dipping down, and shadows creep up the walls of the church.

The lower light proves fascinating to capture at the back of the church. Again, they are having mass, so we quietly sit, letting our eyes adjust to the dim light.

We then notice the glowing gilt ceilings. They are quite beautiful. Because of the church services, we don’t walk around, but feel lucky to have seen these.

Outside Dave gets a good shot of the tiles on the church’s roof.

I think this is about the only picture of us in Zagreb, taken by another friendly tourist.

This building with all the flags is the Ban’s Palace, offices for the prime minister. Across the square (where I found that elegant gold curlicue door handle) is the Parliament building.

We also head to St. Catherine’s church.

There is a sign at the front saying closed for a wedding, but when the fellow in the T-shirt and ball cap (on the left in one of the back pews) pushes past us crackling his grocery sacks, we slip in also. Beautiful plaster work on every surface. I would have loved to have walked around, but I say to myself — repeat after me — Another Time. Visiting this city has been one of the more frustrating visits for me, the difference for what I prepared for and what I was able to see, achingly far apart. While this is a fact of life in all cities, in all countries and on all trips, it feels very pronounced here. I try to let the stillness of the church seep into me, but all I can think about it all the things left unseen in this interesting city.

I try to mentally cross more things off my Tourist List, knowing that at any time a tourist is but a visitor, missing out on the vibrancy of a city, as the sights and attractions and museums are always a poor substitute for living in a foreign place. It will have to be. We head to Budapest tomorrow, back on our own.

It’s getting time to meet up again, and as we pass by, we stop in the Old Pharmacy to take photos of how it might have looked many years ago.

Looks like they’ve reserved a cupboard for the new products. Amazing how garish our modern-day packaging looks when compared to the classic glass and porcelain jars.

She holds the keys to the city, apparently.

Behind that waving tourist is the Stone Gate, with the little chapel with Mary’s unburnt picture. Some more street scenes:

We’re early for the meeting, so go inside to look around the cathedral again, with the stained glass glowing in the setting sun.

We walk up and down several streets, and a couple of times we found a place to eat that had the right combination of prices and food, but then a group would push in past our indecisive quartet and we’d be out of a table. We finally make it to the large social area of town, a street with large bars on either side, catering to the Happy Hour crowd. We found a place that would serve us some dinner, and we relax and enjoy looking at the crowds and our last night together.

Next post: A Train to Budapest

Zagreb, Croatia–part I

Posted on September 9, 2014 by Elizabeth

(This is the 15th post of our Croatia-Budapest trip, June-July 2014)
Friday, June 27

First up, breakfast, at our fabulous hotel. We got there after the tour bus crowd had left, so the repast was severely depleted by the time we got there. No worries, we found things to eat anyway.

And a toy corner for the kids.

Next, we head up to the market, to see what Zagreb’s market is like. It’s set under red umbrellas, which is one of Zagreb’s emblems, seen on different tourist tchotckes.

I’d buy these too, if they already had tomatoes on them.

Little toys for sale. They all seemed to be made in China, frankly.

We’re to meet up Anna Clare and Earl at St. Francis church, a small church up the street from the market. My friend Judy had told me about this, as they had visited it when they went to Zagreb the year before. I was glad I knew about it. Above is the scene carved above the doorway.

Here they are! We wait for the mass to end, then head into the church, the bells tolling and ringing. It was wonderful.

The beautiful blue ceiling reminds me of the small church in Rome, Santa Maria Sopa Minerva.

The inevitable grotto in honor of Mary. While I had a long list of sights-to-see today, I could see that I needed to just tuck that list away, that this was not going to be a touristing day. More like wander, wander, wander, which can often have its own merits.

We wander past the cathedral, but there is a mass going on, so we admire the statue of Mary on her pedestal in the fountain across from the front doors.

We wander back through the market, where we notice this woman in native dress, and snap a photo of Anna Clare standing by another local:

We were able to check off some things on the Rick Steves’ tour of Zagreb, one of which was the Octogon. Here’s our group in the hallway.

This was the “ultimate in iron-and-glass shopping elegance a century ago” and the window over the atrium is gorgeous.

Next up: taking the funicular up to Upper Town, a form of transportation dating from 19th-century.

View from the top.

No time to wander through Stross Market, at the top of the funicular, so we’ll leave it for another day.

Tchotcke seller, but in traditional dress. I give her some money so we can take a photo of her, but passed on the little stuff she was selling.

The Upper Town consists mainly of about 8 blocks of town, with three or so churches. Here’s the Church of St. Catherine, but we can’t see inside. More later. . .

This one is the Greek Church, tucked neatly in the rows of buildings on the main street.

Nikola Tesla, he of the car fame (he championed alternating current), was born in Croatia. He later moved to America.

The alcove of St. Marks, the prominent church on the square in Upper Town with the beautiful tiled roof. This was closed as well. A detail from the door is above.

I peeked inside; we promised to come back to this one too.

We went back down this street (the funicular is at the far end), stopping about halfway to go to the Croatian Museum of Naive Art, an amazing museum (but no photos allowed). Typically these naive artists painted on glass in this area of the country, as that was the material they had, so all the strokes are tiny and smooth, and depicted interesting scenes of giant peaches at the base of a peach tree, people harvesting, angels, demons, storm clouds–all stuff of rural life. I’ve taken some photos of the postcards we brought home, so you can see:

I love the lavender and orange cows in the bottom farm scene.

We wander to the site of where Anna Clare and Earl’s car was impounded when they parked illegally and didn’t know it, while buying Bibles for their mission. I snapped a photo of the opposite corner in honor of this event.

We wander to the overlook, a large flat plaza (which feels like the roof of some building below). Anna Clare and Earl have to head off to do an errand for their mission headquarters, and we set our meet-up time for later. We head back up to the main plaza.

Two door handles on the city buildings surrounding the church.

This is the small chapel inside the only surviving town gate, the Stone Gate, which has a focal point of a painting of Mary that “miraculously survived a major fire in the adjoining house in 1731” or so says Rick Steves.

These stone plaques give thanks (hvala) for answered prayers.

Candles for prayers, I assume, then time to find some lunch.

We need caffeinated fuel, as we are already tired and it’s only the afternoon, but I must admit I enjoyed the glass it was served in.

Dave said he wasn’t hungry, looking forward to the pastry he’d purchased and which was in the backpack, but he ate half of our pasta anyway. Blood sugar restored, two newly caffeinated tourists decide to wander on their own. I pulled out the list of things to see, yet rapidly crossed off about half of them, since the time we were supposed to meet up with Anna Clare and Earl wasn’t conducive to getting to the Lower Town, catching the sights and getting back in time. Another time, I say, uttering the Tourist’s Mantra. We decide to stick with the Upper Town instead.

Next post: Two Sets of Tourists Attempt a Meet-up at a Later Time, or Zagreb, Part II