Sunday, March 15, 2009

Our second life


And as I write this, we are exactly five months away from our wedding! I am so excited, and I've been updating our wedding website quite often as of late. I'm counting down the days until I get to be Colorado-bound!

For the last month we've been Croatians. Although I had to go back to Budapest last week for work, the remainder of Michael and my time has been spent in the low-key city of Zagreb. It's been nice to spend a significant period of time here and to get a better feel for the city and its people, who I find much more friendly to strangers than those in Budapest. Plus, there's been sunshine on the weekends, and after the last few months of grayness I am more appreciative than ever. I've taken the time to wander and photograph the city center, which holds great markets like the daily flower market pictured above. On the weekend we ventured to a large park called Maksimir which has a fun little zoo that we explored. Of course Michael's favorite part was a large colony of coypu (an oversized rodent that is a hybrid of a beaver and a rat), and I would have liked the hippos best, but they were contained in a depressingly dingy and small indoor cage. Although a little low-budget, it was still a pretty good zoo.

We also went to Ljubljana two weekends ago, since it's only 2.5 hours away by train. It was a great little day trip to the city. We ended up doing the same things as we did last year when we visited, like eating lunch at a small microbrewery, walking around the old town, etc., because the city is so tiny, there's not much else to do and all the shops closed at noon, before we even got there.

Yesterday we went to Jarun lake, which sits in the Southern part of the Zagreb. Apparently in the summer most of the town flocks to the lake to swim and bask in the sun on "pebble beach" as it's called. Since it's still too chilly to swim, we did what Croatians do best - lounge in a cafe and stare at the masses of roller bladers skating by.

Here are a couple photos from Zagreb. Visit http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2371877&id=10215414&l=868474d92f to see the whole album.


The Zagreb Cathedral.

The center square of the city.