Grand Hotel, Opatija, Croatia

We spent the morning of the third at Trakoscan Castle, which unfortunately doesn't allow pictures, followed by lunch in Zagorje.

Zagorje is mostly rolling hills of farm land, and the roads are very windy, which resulted in a few of the people getting sick on the way to the restaurant. We made a lot of switchbacks, got out of the bus and walked up a very steep hill and walked into what was essentially a house in the middle of a vineyard.

There were several courses, from appetizers to dessert, and it was just a ridiculous amount of food. We were all just completely stuffed and probably sent a good third of the food back because we just couldn't finish it all. We packed up the desserts that people hadn't touched and saved them for later and then headed back in to town for the kids to do another performance.

At the end of the night we decided to head into town since it was our last night in Zagreb. Some folks were hungry by then and had a midnight snack, but I just sat there and nursed my beer. On the way back to the room around 2:00am and I finally managed to get a decent picture of the statue in the main square.

This morning we packed all of our gear and got into the bus for a 3hr drive to Opatija on the Adriatic coast. We got to the hotel around 3pm and had just enough time to just into the sea before a thunderstorm rolled in and we had to head back. Tomorrow is a day trip to Pula to see some Roman ruins there, but since I'm going to be in Rome in 10 days anyway I'm probably going to skip it and use tomorrow as an R&R day on the beach.

I'd like to be able to upload more pictures to the gallery for the trip, but the wireless connections here are really slow so I can just do a few a day and will have to wait to upload the rest after I get back.

Anyway, happy Fourth of July everyone!