The Flight of the Wailing Babies

Andrew and I have arrived safely in Zagreb Croatia. The flights Edmonton , Calgary Amsterdam and Zagreb were pretty uneventful. I didn't sleep on the transatlantic flight. It left Calgary at 3 and arrived Amsterdam at midnight. They turned the lights off after the meal around 6:30. I wasn't terribly tired but tried to sleep but didn't have much success. At times several of the babies started wailing at once. It was a little comical. By ten they turned the lights back on to feed us a breakfast. After the layover in Amsterdam we continued on to Croatia on Croatia Airlines with a co-chair with Air Canada which was a little crazy. I think Andrew and I were the only Canadians on the flight and we were with Westjet.

We arrived in Zagreb at their brand new terminal. Crazily we disembarked on the runway and were taken by bus to the main terminal. Interestingly two European Typhoon airplanes taxied by us on the runway before taking off. Very impressive. The Canadian government should buy some of them rather than the F35s.

The main glitch occurred after we landed when we realized the esim I had downloaded on my phone wasn't working. Without data, one is lost. Navigation and our bus payment was all on the phone. Andrew downloaded an esim card at the terminal. After getting on the bus and paying with the Zagreb bus app he also lost his data as his esim hadn't connected but at the bus stop we had still been connected to wifi from the airport. We only realized this when we transferred to another bus and realized we were without data. Fortunately Andrew got his card working after several minutes and all was well.

Today we were away by nine to do Rick Steves walking tour of downtown Zagreb. I always enjoy doing his self guided hikes. We wandered around learning about the history of Zagreb. The difference between lower town and upper town and Grdec vs Kaptol the two founding towns that grew into Zagreb. Some of the buildings in Zagreb including the cathedral remain damaged from a severe series of earthquakes in 2020. Everything was pleasant and clean. We met an American wearing a Canadian pin on his coat. Andrew asked him where he lived and he said Rhode Island. It turned out he had lived in Calgary for 30 years and after retiring returned to the US. My favorite 2 sites for the day were the Museum of Naive art and the Mestrovic Atelier. The naive art movement referred to a group of untrained peasant artists starting in 1930 who painted very eye-catching paintings. Ivan Mestrovic was one of Croatia 's famous sculptures. I am sure that I have seen his work before. The collection was very large and we had a very enthusiastic docent give us a tour. After lunch and finishing the circular hike we headed out to Mirogoj cemetery referred to by Rick Steves as one of Europes finest cemeteries. It didn't touch the cemeteries in Buenos Aires but had some impressive gravesites and Mausoleums. By then it was pushing at 3 pm and I was flagging a little. Andrew wanted to keep going but we were running out of things to do and I was tired. I think I may have problems keeping up to Andrew as normally my trips are a little more leisurely. We made it back downtown fairly quickly. Our second bus got stuck in rush hour traffic which seems painfully slow. We eventually just got off and walked about 30 minutes home.Read more