Croatia : Zagreb

Post author:bengalinomad
Post published:May 30, 2023
Post category:City / Croatia 🇭🇷 / travel

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Day – 1

Zagreb is the captial of Croatia and my last stop before flying back home. I started in the afternoon after a long day at Plitvice . The bus reached at Zagreb early evening . I stayed at YHA in Zagreb. After checking in I roamed around city centre and also had my dinner . Interestingly in the city center the have probably smallest train line in the world ( used only for touristic purposes) . Tkes ppl from lower level of the town to upper level.

Day – 2

I had a full day today. I started in the morning from YHA . Today I decided to spend most of the day at Medvenica mountain. Though there is a cable car I decided to hike to the top of Sljeme mountain. This is fairly easy to reach , first bus 14 towards Mihaljevac ( senic journey takes around 18 minutes) and then change to tram no. 15 , in 5 minutes you arrive at the cable car which is the last stop. The hiking trails starts from the base of the cable car station through Sljeme Tunnel or the old cable-car building one can proceed either on a wide gravel road or you can go to the single track trail on your right (about 100 yards from that top) and it will take you to the wide space, deforested lately, and just follow the main path taking you 12 o’clock straight to the woods, around 1.8 km (a bit to the right).The path goes on and on and you will reach small wooden shelter to your right at 2.8 km which is like reaching 1st third of the trail. After that trail goes up to the left and in about 3.4 km you will be crossing Sljeme road and keep on going further till you reach second wooden shelter at 4.2 km and gravel road 10 meters later (completing 2nd third of the trail. From gravel road you will see the trail going up on your left side facing the mountain towards north, and from there on there is no way to go in the wrong direction since this is the only way. Let’s say this is the last step to Stara Lugarnica which is just above intersection of vehicular roads going to Tomislavov dom (left) and further do the eastern cabins (right).

Puntijarka cabin is open the whole year and will offer refreshments at least in the evening if you choose to hike later after work, but food there is also delicious. From there to the top of Sljeme you can take trail which will bring you to the Snježna kraljica and from there on to the before mentioned meadow and ski slopes, passing small church Majke Božje Sljemenske. That should take additional 30-40 minutes moderate hiking pace.

Later in the evening I visited the the European square in the city center and had my dinner in an Indian place (Royal India) which was pretty nice.

Day – 3

This is the last day in Zagreb. I left YHA pretty early in the morning and took bus to Samobor from main bus station . The journey itself is about 50 mins and I reached the Samobor bus terminus at about 7.30 AM. I wandered through beautiful downtown central area, though it was pretty early and town was still sleepy. I kept walking straight down the road to a mini bridge over a small stream on the left hand side, crossed it and followed the path along the stream and base of the mountain for about 10 minutes. Here is the entrance to the path up the mountain. This is a pretty easy hike that most fitness levels can handle. After going up for about 15 minutes I came to the ruins of a castle. Though I did not find the entrance intially (which actually should have been easy to spot) and veered to the outside cliff but eventually came down and entered in the castle. It was completely empty and magical , make sure you walk through to see all the magical little nooks and crannies in it – I totally felt like I was transported into a fairy tale! I wanted to continue to get to the Tepec Vista view point but trail was not easy to spot in gmap, finally I just hiked to the direction crossed a hill which is very speep. The Tepec Vista viewpoint is a metal tower that takes you high above the trees for a 360 degree view of Samobor, Zagreb and beyond. On the way down I followd the woods and the main road back to the bus station.