I don’t really know what I was expecting – but it wasn’t this beautiful city. too many years spent in the 1950s-centric Swan Valley means that I was ill-prepared for this cosmopolitan, yet laid-back, very European city. So much to see!!

Food: love olive oil? Zagreb’s for you. Gilled fish? Let’s marinate that in oil for 57 days before we put it on the burner. Salad? Can do – two types of lettuce leisurely swimming in oil with two cherry tomatoes bobbing like life buoys on top. Omelette? Press it lightly with a fork and watch the oil splodge up, cascading down to cover the table cloth with fatty crystals.

Yep – oil lovers paradise. Cro-man has had his lips ringed with the stuff form his first meal and couldn’t be happier.

Besides oil – there is some seriously good fruit here. The fresh markets are wonderful. I’ve put a photo here of some apricots – they look real and they actually taste like apricots. I ate a whole kilo and wanted to get more, but Cro-man recommended I exercise restraint cos public toilets are few and far between and we couldn’t keep buying water so that I could race to the café loos. AND the best thing – this real fruit cost me the equivalent of $1.80 per kilo.

I’ve also put a photo here of my 47th espresso. To call it the nectar of the gods is to cheapen the experience of Croatian coffee. I want to bath in it just so that it can ooze into me through every pore. Yep….. it really is that good. I’m paying about $1 to 1.50 for a double shot.

The Cro-folk also do meat. Boy , do they do meat!!!! If I were a cardiologist, I would move to Zagreb. With the kind of cholesterol the natives must have, a heart specialist would earn millions! I’ve put 2 photos of 2 different meat counters at the markets where there must be at least 30, all pretty much selling the same stuff. My heart muscle had a spasm just from the smell.