We left Prague on a bus headed for Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. The first thing I noticed was the amount of graffiti covering the walls for as high as arms would reached. When we got dropped off at the bus station we bought our tickets for the next day, early, because we were sure we wouldn't want to spend too much time there. We checked into our Airbnb and even our hosts wondered why we had made the stop there. Thinking there wouldn't be much to see, we started walking towards the downtown area. A few turns down alleyways later, we found ourselves in a quiet corner lined with beautiful buildings. As we stopped to take pictures a man began to play the flute nearby. It was incredibly surreal. We walked slowly through old town making sure to take every turn.
We popped under the freeway and then started climbing a large staircase. When we turned around we could look over the entire city. We had found our way to the Bratislava castle in the hill. It was much more modern than the castles and cathedrals we had experienced before, only being rebuilt about 70 years ago after a fire in 1811. We took one more stroll through town before calling it a night and getting some sleep before heading to Budapest. We woke up early and hopped on the bus. Budapest was much larger than I expected and covered with bridges crossing the Danube river. On our first night we walked around town to get a bearing on the place. We stumbled into a square with a large cathedral then rounded a corner and saw the most beautiful building I'd ever seen, probably the biggest too.
It was the Hungarian parliament building and was the second largest parliament building in the world. The detail on the outside was indescribable. The next day we crossed one of the bridges and headed up a cliff to a large statue that was visible from everywhere we went. We were the only knuckleheads that brought our fully packed backpacks but chalked it up as training and kept moving. There was a large network of trails that took us past the statue and up to a castle that had a view of the entire city. We walked all over Budapest for the next couple days seeing all the incredible sights, climbing a thousand stairs to reach the top of the cathedral, and ending it with a beer looking over the city at night.
I didn't want to leave when we woke up the next morning but we packed up and headed into Croatia. There we would reach the capital city of Zagreb and stay for the night. We got to stay in an attic apartment in the middle of town that looked down on a busy road below. We walked through their crowded town square and up to the town cathedral that had been slowly restored over the last 15 years. It was beautiful. We weaved in and out of the small alleys covered with cafes, and restaurants, and people enjoying the evening. We decided to stay an extra day to see more of the town and we're lucky to find out a friend of Moose' lived in Zagreb and had a few hours to show us around. He had hiked the Te Araroa the same year we had and lived off and on in both New Zealand and Croatia. After ten minutes of walking through town with him, he had convinced us that Zagreb was the best place to live.
Just a few block from where we met up, we turned and saw all of Zagreb for the first time. Every building had so much history and was adorned with colorful roofs.
Photo by Moose
We walked past their parliament building before stopping in to the oldest tavern in town and grabbing a beer. There he gave us all the information for the section of the Via Dinarica trail that we were hoping to do. The Via Dinarica is a long distance trail that travels through seven countries along the Adriatic sea and we wanted to get on it for a little bit while in Croatia. He gave us a ton of notes and a heightened passion for Croatia and this area before we said goodbye. The next morning we hopped on a bus to the coast to start hiking the trail.