London / BST Hyde Park

Just on my way back from my latest time in London. It feels so homey here, I can't stop coming back. Once someone asked me how many times I'd been here, and I had no idea... And that was 5 or 6 visits ago.

I'm sitting in the lounge at Heathrow now, feeling awful with the cold that just keeps getting worse, but also in a fantastic mood, still buzzing from last night. I had originally planned to be in London until Saturday, but when I realised my main man Robbie Williams was closing a festival Sunday night, I updated my plans, got over my hatred of festivals, and bought a ticket.

The gig was BST Hyde Park, and yesterday was its last day of a few weekend concerts. Other acts on the main stage yesterday were Feeder, Texas, Keane, and The Black Eyed Peas. I've enjoyed both Texas and Keane in past, but given the aforementioned cold virus, wasn't sure how much time I could handle in a mega crowd. I left my hotel about 4 hours before Rob was set to hit the stage, which put me arriving just as Keane got started. From my seat in the VIP Garden, they sounded pretty good. Then I attempted to enjoy The Black Eyed Peas (meh), still in the Garden area, before making my way into the crowd in front of the stage for Mr Williams.

 

As always, the show was off the charts, and Rob seemed to be enjoying himself more than ever as the crowd of 65,000 sang his songs back to him... So much so that I also found myself grinning like an idiot for half the gig. Unfortunately with my cough, I didn't just lose my voice jokingly like I always say... I literally lost it completely after singing and cheering all night. By the end of the show, I opened my mouth, and no sound came out. As of today it's back up to a low croak, but I still sound pretty pathetic. Regardless, I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Call me the Little Mermaid, because I will happily give up my voice for this man.

Before the big show, I had a day and a half in my favourite city, which I spent doing lots of shopping -- my luggage is SO heavy today -- visiting the Saatchi Gallery, and soaking as much out of my V&A membership as possible.

The Victoria and Albert Museum is always the first stop for me in London, so last time I was here, I became a member. Well worth it. This time I saw all the current exhibitions, plus wandering the general area, and got a rare non-crowded second viewing of the Dior exhibit. Love it so much.

So I'm happy and sad about going back to America-land today. Miss my cat, but will miss London too...

Ljubljana

I very much liked Ljubljana. It's a charming small city, with beautiful surroundings, and their environmental focus doesn't hurt either (it won European Green Capital in 2016). 

Unfortunately, I woke up with a cold on my only full day here, and didn't have the energy to do as much as I otherwise could have. But I did rally enough to go out and wander for a few hours in the sunshine. 

 

My hotel was nice enough to provide me with access to a free guided tour and a phone set up to be a virtual tour guide around town, including maps and recommendations. Which is a fantastic thing for your usual traveler, but my response was, "ew, why would I want that?" Instead, I did my standard: look at a guide and map in the morning to come up with a general plan and orient myself geographically. Then leave them behind and see where I end up. Most times I still do what I planned to, but even if I get lost, there's always something to see. 

As usual, when I saw there was gallery focused on Slovenian modern art, I started my day with a walk through it. Nearby was the huge Tivoli park, so I went for a walk there next. 

The park was refreshingly unkempt, with flowers growing in the grass, all around the people lounging in the shade of big trees. It was a huge place, so I only walked part of it, but I still came across a couple statues and a pond with a few ducks paddling around the lily pads. 

Next I took a stroll through the ultra touristy old town, stopping for a few photos along the way. I had recently seen the episode of Travel Man where Richard and Eddie Izzard spent 48 hours in Slovenia, so I knew the trek up to the castle was far inferior to the funicular. There wasn't a lot to see in the castle grounds, but the view was unbeatable. 

After the castle, I could feel a sunburn coming on, despite my SPF-As-High-As-Possible, so I headed back to get something to eat, then to the hotel to crash and watch football. 

This morning I felt much worse with my cold and mostly wanted to stay in bed all day. But I had a flight at 5pm (now delayed) and a hotel without an ability for late checkout, so I had to vacate at noon. Given that I felt too crap to go back out wandering town in the heat, here I sit at the airport, waiting for someone to fly me off to London. 

If I felt better, I would definitely not be in such a hurry to leave. 

Zagreb

Now that I no longer have to spend all my time and money going to Scotland every few weeks, I've been diverting it back to seeing more new places.* My original idea was to spend around 10 days going all across a few countries in Eastern Europe, most of which were once part of Yugoslavia. When I do these kinds of trips, I usually like to fly into one major city and out of a different one, while taking trains around to points in between. Once I started looking into logistics, though, I found that my usual methods will not apply here. Flights are limited and connect somewhere out of the way, and trains are either extremely long or don't go at all, due to terrain or lack of demand.

So I settled on two major cities, with a train of just a couple hours running between them. First stop: Zagreb, Croatia.

When most people think of Croatia these days, they think of everyone's pretty pictures of the coastline and Dubrovnik, or the countryside. I'm definitely more of a city girl, and have seen stories that poor Dubrovnik's getting way overrun with more tourists than they can handle... plus, it's really hard to find flights there. So Zagreb, here we go!

As per my routine, I spent 2 nights here, giving myself one full day to see the city. My hotel is right on the main square, which makes it perfectly situated for me to just head out and see what I found. Just about everything listed in my guide book was within walking distance, so I headed out yesterday morning, figuring I'd pick my attractions by what I came across in my ramblings. I first wandered through about 3 blocks of parks (Park Zrinjevac and Park Josipa Jurja Strossmayera, per the map), which were busy getting set up for an 'open air festival' apparently coming soon.

At the end of the 3rd green space was the central train station, where I stopped to sort my ticket to Ljubljana for today. I'd tried to buy it online a couple of times, but the website told me I couldn't purchase it there. I had multiple online sources assuring me that the train does run, and tickets can only be bought in person, but I'm not the type who's okay with just rocking up on the day and assuming everything will be fine. Lucky that, since I discovered at the station that there are no longer any trains between the two cities. Oh boy, an adventure!

On the walk back toward my hotel, I popped into the National Modern Gallery, which features roughly 200 years of Croatian artists. It was great, definitely worth the price of admission... which isn't much anyway. I love seeing art in my travels, especially places like this where they focus on locals -- it's something I couldn't find anywhere else.

After a brief stop back in the hotel to handle my transportation concerns, I walked out to spend a good chunk of time at the Zagreb Cathedral (love me a fancy house of worship) and Tržnica Dolac (the farmers' market), then did some shopping around the main square. 

In general, Zagreb is familiar. As the capital of a country that found its way out of a communist past, it shares traits with similar cities I've visited. But flying over from the UK I was surprised to only have to change the time by an hour, and realised Zagreb is further west than Vienna and Stockholm. Geographically, it's pretty central, so I found it odd that it would be considered Eastern.... until I arrived and took a stroll through town. Now that I've been here, I get it; it's very much Eastern Europe in spirit.

I've eaten well here, but the interwebs couldn't agree on whether the water here was okay to drink or not. I've been pretty cavalier downing tap water in most of my travels, but still always do a quick search on arrival so as not to be totally stupid. In the end, I drank bottled sparkling water during the day (my preference anyway) and used the taps for my coffee and oatmeal in the morning. While I've had no issues from consuming it, my travel electric kettle did end up with thick sludge inside from a white powdery sediment in the water. I know the water is very hard here, so it's most likely just a mineral that's harmless... but fair warning, it's pretty unappetizing to see that crud floating around. Zagreb's tap water is not for the faint of heart.

In a couple of hours I will check out of my hotel and get on a bus (a BUS!) to Slovenia. When I found no trains available, my options were to fly (expensive at the last minute, nothing direct), rent a car and drive (more money and hassle than I'd like for one trip of less than 100 miles), or a cheap direct bus. Fine. Sold. It's only 2.5 hours, so I can suck it up... this once.


*To an extent. I am bookending this trip with Edinburgh and London, but that's a different subject for another day.