Traveling with MC: Croatia and Slovenia

Finally, and as I promised, here's the much-awaited post of my trip to Slovenia. I was meant to publish this much earlier, but life had other plans for me, and I haven't been able to do so until now. Well, I guess that better late than never.

Let's start explaining how we ended up planning this trip. In case you don't know, Mr. Monster and I have a 20-year-old nephew who is studying history at university. This year, he decided to do Erasmus and stay for a full year in Maribor, Slovenia. Of course, as soon as we found out, we decided that we were going to visit him. Slovenia wasn't exactly in our traveling plans, but we thought this was a great opportunity to travel to a not-so-talked-about country. And honestly, it was worth it.

 

When we started planning the trip, the first issue we found is that there aren't many direct flights from Spain to Slovenia, unless you're flying from Madrid or Barcelona, which are both quite far away. So, we were left with two options: fly to Austria or  Croatia and then take a train to Slovenia. We ended up choosing to fly to Croatia, spend a few days there, and then travel to Slovenia. In total, we spent 10 days there. 

On early April, we arrived in Zagreb, which is the capital of Croatia. Croatia is a rather small country, with just 3,8 milion inhabitants; 1 million of those live in Zagreb and the surrounding metropolitan area. For reference, Madrid, the capital of Spain, has over 3 million inhabitants, and Spain is not that big of a country. The first day we didn't get to see much, as we arrived late at night and had just enough time to pick up our rental car, check in at the apartment we were staying and have something for dinner. On our first morning there, we did a guided tour around the city, and it was fantastic. It was one of those free tours that, at the end, you tip the guide (usually something between 5-10€ per person). Our guide spoke great Spanish and I felt like I should be taking notes so I wouldn't forget anything. 

Saint Mark's Church

Back in 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, Croatia suffered a huge earthquake, which left many buildings damaged. One of those buildings is the Cathedral of Zagreb, which you can see photographed down below. Because of the earthquake, one of the top parts of the cathedral fell into the building next to it, causing damages. Out of safety, they decided to remove the other top part with a controlled explosion, but they have preserved it next to the building. As of today, the building is still being restored, and it's not opened for visits. 

 

Zagreb is rather small and can be visited in about 2 days. Since we had a rental car, we decided to go visit other Croatian towns in the morning, and then walk around Zagreb in the evenings. One of the places we visited is the Tracoscan Castle, built in the XIII century, and it's considered one of the most beautiful in Croatia. It does look straight up from a fairy tail. If you go there, you don't even need to visit the interior of the castle; just walk around the lake and enjoy the beautiful view.

 

Before going to Slovenia, we left our apartment in Zagreb and drove to a town called Rastoke, where we spent our afternoon and the night. This was one of my favorite places during the entire trip. The old part of the town has cascades and water flowing around and under the houses, so it almost looks like some houses are floating in water. We were mind-blown with how beautiful this looked. 

 

The following day we woke up early and drove to the National Park of the Plitvice Lakes (Plitvice Jezera). It's a huge park composed of 16 lakes interconnected between them. Unfortunately, due to flooding, part of the park was closed to visitors, so we did a shorter route. However, this was still our favorite part of the entire trip. 

I feel like my photos don't do it justice to how breathtakingly beautiful this is. Totally recommend the visit to this park. Pictured down below is the Veliki Cascade (Veliki Slap), which is the tallest in Croatia. 

 

We went in April, and there was still some ice in some of the areas, so we would recommend going more towards June. 

We stayed there from 9 a.m until noon. After grabbing something for lunch, we drove to Slovenia, to meet with our nephew. If you thought Croatia was small, wait until you find out that Slovenia has just a bit over 2 million inhabitants. We stayed for a few days in Ljubljana, which is the capital of Slovenia and the largest and most populated city, with 285.000 inhabitants. 

Triple Bridge, Ljubljana

We did not pay for a guided tour here, as our nephew had been there quite a few times and knew his way around, as well as a lot of interesting facts about the city. One of the things we did visit was the castle, which looks beautiful and has such great views of the city.

 

One day we decided to visit Trieste in Italy, as it is just one hour and a half drive from Ljubljana. One of the things worth visiting there is the Square of Unity (Piazza Unità d'Italia), which leads directly to the gulf of Trieste. There're a bunch of gorgeous buildings in this square, like the Trieste Town Hall

Town Hall, Trieste

Another great excursion you can do in the area is the Bled Lake, which surrounds the Island of Bled, the only natural island of Slovenia. The island is tiny and has a church in the middle of it, which makes it look straight up from a fairy tale. 

A few days later we drove all the way to Maribor, which is the second most populated city in Slovenia, with 113.000 inhabitants, and where my nephew is currently living. It was a bit more industrial, and I didn't find it as charming as Ljubljana, but I still enjoyed the visit. 

Maribor Town Hall

 

Basilica of Our Mother Mercy

Of course, we had to do another excursion with our rental car (we made the most out of that car!) and we visited Graz, in Austria, where I could put my A2 German certificate to good use. 

One of the must-see things in Graz is the Clock Tower (Uhrturm). To get there, we had to go up all of those stairs you can see in the photo above. Below, there's a photo from the clock when we got there. 

Our visit to Graz was our last day there, as the following day we had to pack our stuff and come back to Spain. This was our longest trip so far and it was exhausting, but so far is my favorite trip we've ever done. We would definitely love to come back, to see those beautiful landscapes and enjoy the delicious food. Oh my God, THE FOOD!  I don't think there was anything I tried there that I didn't like. Here's a photo of one of my favorite dishes, strukli, which is a Croatian dish. It looks like a lasagna, but inside it has like cottage cheese, and it's delicious. 

I hope you enjoyed this post. Originally, I had planned to make a longer post, maybe a two part post going into more detail, but it's been so long, and I already have a lot of work to do for Monster Crafts.  Since early May, I have had a YouTube video half filmed, and I would love to work on that next. Of course, once I wrap up the filming process, the not so fun process of editing begins. But hopefully I can have a new YouTube video up on my channel in the next couple of weeks. 

This past month  has been very stressful for me. I was doing an accounting course, which took a lot of my time, plus my German classes 4 hours a week. On top of that, Mr. Monster injured his arm and hasn't been able to do a lot of the housework that he does. Even simple tasks like doing the dishes he couldn't do for a few weeks. That means that all the weight of the household has fallen onto me, which has left me with barely enough time to keep up with work and my studies. He's doing much better now, and I'm done with classes until September, but due to all the stress, my head hasn't been in the right creative space to plan out content for the blog or for YouTube. Hopefully, as days go by, I'll find my groove again and start working on fun dolly stuff. 

Varazdin, Croatia

I hope everyone is doing great. I have not kept up with your blogs at all, which is what I always say, but I'll try to do a little catch-up round (last time I failed miserably). Let me know what you think in the comment section. What place would you be more interested in visiting?

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading me or, as they say in croatian and slovenian "Hvala".  

See you soon

 

Monster Crafts