August 25, 2020
To Krapina
It’s moving day! After five nights in Zagreb we’re finally ready to mobilize. We’re happy to have gotten such a good look at the city, but we’re getting antsy to move. We have never spent so long in one spot at the beginning of a tour.
We have a fairly short ride today and can’t check in at our lodging until 3, so we take our time getting started. After leaving our suitcases behind at the hotel for the next two months, we finally leave the hotel about ten and start biking west out of the city.
Twelve miles and nearly two hours later, it feels like we are finally leaving the city behind. Leaving Zagreb to the west is much more difficult than the other directions - at least following the route I picked out. The city sprawls further in this direction, and is much less bike friendly. Later, over dinner, I asked Rachael to describe this part of the day’s ride. Awful. Terrible. Dangerous. Scary. Also, very slow.
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Finally, two hours later, we leave the congestion, traffic and highways behind. The rest of the ride is really very nice, getting better by the mile as we work our way north into Zagorje, the county northwest of Zagreb along the Slovenian border. As we move north the terrain becomes increasingly complex. Our route remains flattish as we follow the narrow valley of the Krapinica River, but all around us the land is starting to swell up.
Toward the end of the ride we come to the only real challenge of the day - a short, steep climb over a narrow ridge. We only gain about 200 feet, but they’re all painful; and mostly gained by pushing our bikes up. We earn a dramatic view though, and a swift descent down the other side.
We arrive in Krapina about 2:30, and find an open cafe near our room to enjoy a drink and ice cream until it’s time to call our host Maya to meet us at the room. We’re staying at an apartment here, quite a change of pace from our last five nights in a four star hotel with a big spread for breakfast each morning. This will become the norm though. We are staying almost exclusively in apartments on this tour, and won’t stay in an actual hotel again for nearly three weeks.
Maya’s place, the Lavandra Apartment, is very comfortable and has a stylish decor, with purple and lavender everywhere you look. A separate bedroom, a full kitchen, there’s even a washer and drying rack. It feels like an excellent deal at roughly 350 kuna/night (about $55), but the rate is pretty standard. Most of our lodgings will be roughly this expensive.
We’ll be staying here three nights, so we can take day rides into the surrounding hills. Soon after we check in, Rachael walks to the grocery store just two blocks away to provision our stay here. Later, we walk along the road for a half mile to the commercial center where we stop in at Manna Mia’s pizzeria for dinner.
Our walk back to the room is very pleasant. Instead of following the road road we walked along a path along the edge of the Krapinica, enjoying the slow-moving creek with its ducks and small breakwaters, families in the parks and playgrounds, and the rows of stately trees lining the bankS. It feels great to be out of the city again.
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I think you have found a common wall lizard. I have found them in the Cincinnati area myself, maybe 20 years ago and was surprised to find they are invasive here in southern Ohio, in that area.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/55990-Podarcis-muralis/browse_photos
https://www.uc.edu/lizards/Wall_Lizard_History.html
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Video sound track: Sreca (happiness), by Philip Disdar
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Ride stats today: 39 miles, 1,200’; for the tour: 157 miles, 2,800’
Today's ride: 39 miles (63 km)
Total: 157 miles (253 km)
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Did you book the apartment there (and others to follow) through Airbnb?
4 years ago
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