Monday, 12 May 


Milan - Belgrade - Zagreb

Zagreb - Hotel Astoria 


Weather - Zagreb - Cool, cloudy - 16c Max 


Today breakfast was in Italy, lunch in Serbia and dinner in Croatia. We were out of bed at six o’clock to be ready for the airport shuttle bus at seven. Thankfully, we didn’t have last evening’s crazy shuttle bus driver. This one was much improved but did think stop signs were mere road decorations! The ride took six minutes. 


After going through security and passport control we grabbed a quick breakfast of croissants and coffee at a cafe outside a Gucci store. It wasn’t a patch on our favourite cafe in Bellano. Due to not being able to book a direct flight from Milan to Zagrab we had to go via Belgrade which was a bit bizarre as we went further east to fly back west.


The flight to from Milan to Belgrade gave us some good views over the countryside. We had an excellent view of Venice with its outer barrier. Our flight from Belgrade to Zagreb was delayed and we waited two hours for the flight. We had a falafel lunch at an aptly named airport cafe, “In and Out” with the motto “Real Food Real Fast”. I took the opportunity to start the daily blog as tonight would be busy as we meet our tour group for drinks at six o’clock. 



The Bunnik Tour group provided a pick-up from the airport to our hotel and due to our late arrival we hit peak hour. It gave us a chance to be briefed by the driver on all things Croatian. He spoke excellent English and taught us how to say thank you in Croatian so we can now be polite! Julia, our buddy from a previous Bunnik tour, was in the hotel lobby waiting for us. It was good to see her again. We agreed to meet in the hotel bar for a catchup at five fifteen before meeting the other travellers at the pre-arranged time of six o’clock.


It was a good evening meeting Sanda who will be our guide for the next three weeks and meeting our fellow travellers. There are 19 in our group. We all seem to be about the same age and all are well-travelled. We enjoyed nibbles, a 30th birthday cake for our tour company, wines and tasty cakes. At eight o’clock we called it a night. We had a long day and we had plenty to eat at the tour meet-up. 


Tomorrow we meet at nine for an initial tour of Zagreb. We’re looking forward to it.






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