Adventures in Europe (Part 1)

Hello all!

It's been too long since I made an actual blog post about how I've been.
If you've been keeping up with me, you all know that I've been in Europe for the past 3 weeks. :)
These past 3 weeks have been absolutely fabulous so far and I still have a couple weeks left to do more touring and sightseeing.

Since I have too much to talk about, I guess I'll break them into parts and hopefully compile a vlog video in the end. Warning: this is a picture-heavy post!

My friends and I decided to take a road trip out to Croatia (from Austria, which we are staying in as a home base).

Our first stop was in Zagreb, the capitol of Croatia.

Unfortunately, the rain was following us around as we went, but we were able to work with it.

Ban Jelacic Square

Something that I really am enjoying in Europe is visiting the old churches and buildings because they are absolutely beautiful and have this breath-taking aura around them. To be honest though, I didn't know the names of the many churches I went into, but I will try my best to recall as many as I could.

As we first arrived into the city center, we came across our first church, which I don't know the name of. It was fairly small compared to some of the churches that I've seen so far.

The details in the paintings on the walls were absolutely amazing.

We made our way down to an area called the Kaptol to visit one of Zagreb's main attractions, the twin towers of the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Right next to the cathedral were the Renaissance Walls, which were the cathedral's defensive walls with round towers that were built for protection. 

There's me! 

After much walking around, we got hungry. I've noticed that many places are closed on the weekends in Europe and we had a hard time finding somewhere to eat. 

Luckily, we came across a somewhat busy area with places to eat and shop.

We ate at a nice Italian restaurant and the pasta was absolutely fabulous. I ordered a creamy pasta with salmon.

For your viewing pleasure, I included a picture of my friend's seafood risotto as well.

Time flew by really quickly as we realized we needed to head to our hostel so we could visit Plitvicka Jezera National Park the next day. 

As this was my first ever hostel experience, I didn't know what to expect. Luckily, our hostel was amazing as it felt like we were in a pension. We even had a kitchen!

Our cute room with beds.

A nice patio with a pool table.

A spacious bathroom.

All this for 15 Euros (equivalent to around $20) for a night!

Oh, and I must add that Croatian beer is probably one of the best beers I've had in my life. I'm not one who would drink beer, but this beer was fantastic. 

Well, that is all for today's blog post. Hopefully, in the next few days, I will be blogging about my time at the national park because that was definitely the highlight of the trip.

I'll give you a sneak preview of what I got to see:

~mindy