23/03/2022 – Juliano’s World Frenzy Resumes! – Day 3
6am and I was awake again, and looking out of the window the weather was already shaping up to be a glorious day. It was a lazy start to the morning, but I did finally get most of my London map coloured in with the progress from Day 1, the bit on the other side got done later to allow the ink to dry (this map is of a more durable and weather-proof designs than some of my maps, which means the ink from the highlighter takes a while to soak into the map). It should go without saying it looks much better, and I was already looking forward to getting on my beast again on Day 5 and adding more to my map!
Eventually, some time after 8am, I was finally ready to go. I had declined breakfast at the hotel, I wasn’t willing to pay for it to find virtually nothing vegan-friendly. Part of my morning was spent looking up options for vegans in Zagreb, Google was my hero on this and to be honest I didn’t feel vegan was much of a thing in Croatia as it is in the UK. Which is a shame, but it is what it is. There was a bit of a chill factor going on in the shade, but in the sun it was quite nice. The shorts were in the bag ready!
My first port of call ended up being King Tomislav Square, right outside the main railway station for Zagreb. I’ll come back to that near the end of this trip report! It is a pretty place, and King Tomislav was Croatia’s first King, according to my walking map guide. I’ll say it now, choosing photos for this trip report is going to be tough, with the activity on Strava I shared a huge 64 photos so expect plenty to look at, and yes there are railway ones in the collection! I continued up the left side of the square, ending up at Ban Jelaćić Square. As I study my map in the late evening, typing this up, I note a couple of little curiosities I didn’t see during the day, so they’ve gone on the list to be done on Day 4 before I depart for London.
I can see why Zagreb’s population likes this square, it’s easy to access by tram (some of which are modern, some old but it’s noteworthy the new ones have a surprisingly good sound to them) or foot and it’s a bit like the big square in the centre of Nottingham. Which I also like, and from street level it’s hard to do this square justice in photos. Still, I’ve tried to do enough to raise intrigue in my fellow adventurers!
I was heading north, slowly, following an approximate route to an area Maps has a green pin for. Normally this indicates a park or similar, and I was sure it was this one in particular I was looking for, following the read about it on a website recently. First, I had an ultra quick look at the Dolac, an open-air market. The fruit I saw in particular looked so good right then, bearing in mind I still had not eaten breakfast at that point. With no cash on me, and severe doubts over any card payments being taken, I didn’t stop to get anything. I next found the cathedral, which was pretty impressive. Salisbury and Ely are both so much more impressive, it must be said, but still this is worth a look.
Still heading north, and still not being used to looking left first, not right, at crossings and I found myself at Centar Kaptol, a shopping centre. Inside I found Konzum, a supermarket and I found lots of appealing food. All hail the mighty Konzum, as they actually had things like vegan salami! A Croatian supermarket which knows what such a thing is, happy days! I also had some hash browns off the hot food counter, and sourced other goodies for lunch as well as a large espresso. That would turn out to be very wise!
Nearly 88kn later, bumped up hugely by an 800ml coconut milk drink (I had not brought any vitamin supplements with me, so the calcium, Vitamin D and B12 were worth the 24,99kn), I had everything I needed for a busy day. I even found some vegan friendly energy gels for reasonable prices! I must use them up actually before I fly on Day 4, oh the hardship that will be eh?
Back outside, and with the hash browns devoured in seconds but worth every bit of 7,50kn, I was back on the move. By now I was absolutely convinced that today was the day to set a new walking record. Not a speed record this time, I was happy with 5.2mph over an hour-long mission when I set that record a few weeks ago. This was all about distance, and long-time readers will already know I did some epic distances in Budapest and Tokyo way back in 2019. Those adventures seem so long ago, but then Budapest was around 2.5 years ago so I guess that’s fair. 2022’s record so far was 11.96, only 8 days previously, my Strava record in March 2021 was 16.25 and I had it in my head it was around 20 in Tokyo as my record for one day. Would I demolish that? You’ll soon find out!
With a lot of walking uphill in the warmth, I eventually arrived where I had aimed for, only to find it was a bloomin’ huge cemetery! Yes there are parts of it overlooking the city, but this is not what I had expected! I found the park I was looking for, thankfully Three were not charging me extra for roaming until May 2022. With only my offline map, I’d have been a bit stuck!
Once I got out of there, I had a nice long downhill walk, followed by some narrow streets and more uphill walking. These hills started getting a bit more intense the further I went, and this park was basically a woodland, but with no signs up if you didn’t know it was there you would never find it. Thankfully Maps knows where to go, and I had a great time reconnecting with nature there. I saw no one else in my time there, the peace and quiet was so welcome. At one point, there was an exit to another part of the cemetery. Seriously, that place was huge, but I found a route further up through the woodland that would take me somewhere else.
I got there, but it wasn’t too clear if there was actually a way out of the woodland up there and I wasn’t risking it, so did the other path up that way and took on some more paths once back where I had started. On the way up the hills, I’d noticed what looked like a mileage spike on Strava, but it didn’t show on the map, so I assumed I’d read it wrong. That would come back to wind me up later!
As did trying to avoid going through the cemetery, but my last path took me through some of it and I gave up trying to avoid it and getting to an exit was now top priority. I was finding somewhere to sit for lunch, for I was rather hungry. I took a different road back to the city, then realised I must be close to the park on the walking map. A check on Maps, and yes I was 21 minutes away, let’s go!
Once there, I found a bench to collapse onto and devour my picnic. Recovering from the epic walk so far was important, and this place was enormous. This was Maksimir Park, opened to Zagreb in 1794 and covering 316 hectares, almost as much as New York’s Central Park. I can agree with that, this place would take some hours to explore the whole lot. There’s seriously that many trails and just generally all-round beauty to go and explore, but I had a city to finish exploring first. I saw a lot of it, and by the time I stopped to change into shorts I was close to my all-time distance record on Strava. It was early afternoon, so definitely too warm for running tights now!
Once I got back into the city, and it is a fair walk from the centre, I stopped at a Studenac Market for a cold drink and a coffee. The coffee is not that great from these shops, it must be said, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. My walk took me to Art Park, in the Upper Town, and after a break there I carried on around all sorts of different streets. I somehow ended up at the supermarket again, so I sourced more food for later and some brown rice crisps for immediate consumption. They were surprisingly nice!
Stone Gate looked worth checking out on the map, but unless you’re really into things like the Virgin Mary who there is a shrine to, and several people filled the pews in the area, then it’s not really something to go out of the way for. St Mark’s Square, a short distance away, was mostly barrieried off but the church’s glazed roof tiles bearing the coat of arms of Croatia was still perfectly visible.
I next found myself on Strossmayer Promenade, alongside Lotrščak Tower. Later on, I paid the 20 kuna fee to go up there and have a look at the panoramic views of the city. The stairs going up are seriously narrow and fairly deep, so worth bearing in mind. The views are good, don’t get me wrong, but for the few minutes most people would be up there it is a bit expensive.
The funicular railway is next to the tower, but I did not fancy paying out to do that. Once upon a time, yes, but that was before I got heavily into walking and cycling. Good gravy I was looking forward to getting back on the beast! The railway is the shortest in the world, at least in use for regular public transport, taking 64 seconds (you wait longer than that for departure!) and it opened in 1890. It took me less than 64 seconds to walk the stairway, or at least I had thought so but a segment on Strava for walking (not many of those in most cities) suggested it took me 2 minutes and 2 seconds.
Once I had a final walk around in this area, I finally found Grič Tunnel. This was built in World War 2, as an air raid shelter, and is now used as a shortcut avoiding a number of busy streets. I took the opportunity to do a video clip through it, which will get linked to. It was a funky experience, one of the more unusual ones and something I’d recommend doing just as a quieter way past some streets really!
I had now done the majority of what I wanted to do in Zagreb, I’m not one for hours in museums or sitting around in cafes for ages. When there are so many wonderful places to go and see, I’d rather focus on that! I always knew Zagreb would not have enough for me to do for too long, so this short trip was perfectly long enough. Next on my agenda was a proper look at the railway station, and I was by then on 23 and something miles. I also found myself taking in the view of the Esplanade Hotel, which was opened for travellers on the Orient Express, on their way from Paris to Istanbul. If they could see the state of the station now, they’d probably be unamused too! The hotel looked incredible though, definitely one I’d look at staying in if I was coming back here.
I was going to look at the nearby Botanical Garden, but that appeared to be closed. A path alongside it got followed, and that led to an open path alongside the railway, and onto platform 5 at the station. No really, that is where my photos of the two modern EMUs and the shunter with coaching stock were taken! The poor old EMUs that were absolutely covered in graffiti, they have definitely seen better days!
If I had arrived at Zagreb by train, I have to say I’d wonder what awful place I’d arrived at, quite honestly, the station was nothing to be impressed by. The front of the station was nice, but the rest of it was enough to make me realise just how rancid some European stations are and what I’d see if I ever did an InterRail in these parts!
Back outside, I was now less than a mile from the 25 mile walking goal I’d set myself, so I went out to achieve just that. Finding some facilities near a tram stop was most welcome too! The walk ended back at Sheraton Hotel, 25.1 miles Strava told me I’d done. Well, when I looked at my map later, I saw one heck of a GPS spike at a spot I’d stopped to send a text. That would explain the 2 miles or so I thought I’d seen it go up by earlier on. I can’t be sure how much the spike caused Strava to be out by, it could be well under 2 miles, but my estimate is 2.5 miles (difficult to tell so I’ve attempted to overclaim the error) so while I didn’t hit the nice and easy to remember amount I’d wanted for my new record, 22.6 miles is still good! A new record is a new record, and of course it will get beaten in due course. Maybe on the next World Frenzy? Certainly I have opportunities to do so in the UK too, we will see!
Back in the room, I collapsed onto the bed and got the activity logged before devouring a load of food. I was famished! Later on, after much resting, I went downstairs and had 5 minutes of chilling in the pool. That sorted out the need for the body to unwind, and I now had a second wind, so it was time to hit up the gym for a while! I found how to set the difficulty level on the exercise bike this time, although not how to tell if it’s in miles or kilometres.
I got distracted looking up food options for later on, as I knew I’d want some more food, otherwise I’d have probably done better than 11.75km (easier to underclaim it as km, which makes sense in this part of the world anyway) in 20 minutes on Level 5, I got up to 13 and a bit with the 5 minute cool down. Better than nothing! After heading out to a local shop, where to my surprise I found Ma Baker flapjacks which I know are vegan, I had goodies! They sell a hazelnut flavour as well as cranberry. I don’t recall having the cranberry one before, the hazelnut one is new to me for sure, and both are very nice! A big bag of crisps and one each of the flapjacks got worked on as I typed up this huge trip report, which took until 2222, and I’d started typing more than 90 minutes earlier! At least I was now also chilled out and fed well, it was finally time for a bath to give the feet a well deserved recovery before I crashed out for the night!
Day 4 would at least be a lot more easy going, that’s for sure!
Tech's World Frenzy 