Zagreb, Croatia to Bergamo, Italy

I was supposed to be making a stop on Zadar. I was excited about it. There’s a beautiful hotel there with views of the sea. A strange and wonderful art and music experience called the sea organ, and great architecture and history…But instead I ended up in the capital of Croatia - Zagreb - because my boat off of Lošinj was canceled and it only runs a couple times a week so I would’ve missed more than half of my Italy route.

So after a bunch of scrambling to get a bus reservation, change my flight, and a new hotel…to Zagreb I went.

How was the bus ride? Brutal. When you purchase a ticket it has a seat number but no one except for a handful of people adhere to that so people are arguing about seats at every stop the entire 6 hour ride.

It is bumpy, as mentioned previously, and I was planning on working but was in the very back on the aisle- the only seat on the whole bus with no table. The bus made one stop for a bathroom break (besides the ferry ride). And there was lots of stop and go and windy roads. I wouldn’t choose that method of travel again. The bag situation states you have a checked bag included but they were collecting cash to put bags under the bus- still not sure what that was about. My backpack was just small enough to fit in the overhead bins so I took it with me in the main cabin of the bus.

The positive of the bus was that I did see some other incredible areas of Croatia that I'd love to go back to and spend more time in. After departing Mali Losinj the bus headed towards Cres but before we got there we had to make it over the Osor Bridge because when it closes, it closes for over an hour to let the boat traffic in and out of the harbor. Once we got over to Cres we dropped down into a little town called Merag where we took a ferry to Valbiska and then headed up towards Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. 

The hotels can be a little tricky with how they word things. The hotel I stayed in advertised an “airport shuttle” on their website. Well, when asked I was informed that meant you go back to the bus station (3min walk) and buy a ticket to the airport…I opted for a $16 Euro Uber ride. Kind of done with buses right now.

[Next day] It’s 3:20pm and my flight from Zagreb was supposed to leave at 10:40am. Technical problems apparently. But the delayed departure time was listed as 2:30pm. I'm flying Ryan Air and although their employees are very nice the whole gate and boarding process is a complete cluster, just like the bus. A girl got onto the flight, couldn’t find overhead space for her TWO huge bags so she put them in an empty overhead bin but then just randomly sat in a seat. Then two guys get on and she’s in one of their seats and instead of having her move to her seat they tell the two guys to sit by me. Then a girl who is supposed to sit by me is told to just find an empty seat because neither of the guys would move…you get the picture….all of the seat jockeying probably made us 20 minutes more late.

I didn't get to see much of Zagreb but I hope I'll make it back some day to explore. In the photo below we are taking off out of Zagreb and flying back over Croatia and you easily make out the Vidikovac Limski Canal. 

I ended up flying into Il Caravaggio International Airport (Milan Bergamo) instead of Milano Malpensa Airport (MXP) and I will say Northern Italy is definitely an area I want to go back to. Stunning mountains and lakes (I believe this is Lake Iseo) and beautiful estates perched on green hills that could be seen as we descended into Bergamo...it's another stunning area of Italy.

 
 

We will see how well the renowned travel insurance I purchased worked for trip interruptions and cancellations. I’ll leave this blog at our descent into Bergamo, Italy… Ciao!