Perhaps the most self-aware 9-year-old I have ever known, when asked about visiting ANOTHER art museum, Ashton responded “I don’t think I have the maturity to care.” It seems we have reached a limit. The new deal is not more than 1 art museum per city.
Unfortunately, Zagreb is currently in the middle of a heat wave, so the air-conditioned allure of an art museum was not our destiny today. Instead, we went to a large farmers’ market in the morning and bought a lifetime supply of blueberries, red currants (where have these been all my life?), blackberries, peaches, carrots, and several varieties of green beans (in assorted, non-green colors). We dropped all this back at the apartment and set out for the Botanical Garden. It was pleasant, though pretty warm. After sweating through all our clothes, we decided that rather than walk back to the apartment, it was time to try out the tram…so we bought some tickets and took the speedy way home to the air conditioning.
Dinner consisted of some pastries and this morning’s haul from Dolac Market (the fruit and vegetable market established in the 1930s) followed by some packing up for the next adventure. We have another 6.5-hour train ride ahead of us down to Split, Croatia tomorrow.
As a side note, since I have not gotten to write about Zagreb, we have commented the whole time on how much construction is going on. Also, we have been perplexed that most of the museums are temporarily closed. Finally, yesterday, Jessie solved both mysteries in a fascinating discovery. Zagreb’s historic city center was hit almost directly by a massive earthquake just over 2 years ago (during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic to add insult to injury). Most of the large old buildings experienced significant damage which explains the museum closures and the scaffolding and cranes covering a huge percentage of the city. We have LOVED Zagreb and are glad we came to this quirky and casual town…but now we feel like we need to come back in 10 years once it has rebuilt and recovered.