you can tell its an important building - its yellow
The weather is still chilly - don’t you hate it when everybody tells you how nice it was last week?
The bus tour through Zagreb was narrated by Zinka who is the person who told me all the important buildings are painted yellow. Maria Teressa (an Austria-Hungarian Empress) had donated money to build a number of impressive buildings throughout Zagreb and wanted them all painted yellow (Hapsburg yellow) to show exactly what she’d given to the city. But the Hapsburg’s weren’t the only ones who left a political mark on Zabgeb - strangely enough the USA had an impact. Three of the city squares are named after US Presidents: FDR, JFK, and Thomas Jefferson.
The upper portion of Zagreb was originally two separate medieval cities, Kaptol and Gradec, neighboring towns on a hill over the Sava River.
making new friends with a statue
The towns occasionally fought (who knows why - I suppose it was a guy thing) and there are still remains of a stone gate between them. The Lower Town is much newer and contains the train station and several parks.
The tour took us to the top of Kaptol to a lovely cemetery, then down to the Cathedral and a nearby market. We walked to Gradec and then took a funicular back up to the market. My husband, an engineer, was critical of the cable car design and suggested a cog system would have been a better choice for breaking a fall in case of cable failure. I wish he had told me this after, not before I rode on it.
The tower near the funicular has a cannon protruding from one window and the cannon is fired at noon each day - an event that took us quite by surprise at noon this day. We wandered thru the market and visited the Archeology Museum on the way back to the hotel Regent Esplanade.
