Today we began by taking a ride on the Zagreb funicular, which, at sixty six metres, is said to be the shortest in the world and apparently it is one of the steepest too. It has been in operation since 1890 taking passengers up to the Lotrscak Tower which was built in the thirteenth century to guard the old town walls.
Once we arrived at the tower, we were keen to climb up it and soon had an excellent view of the city all around us. Climbing towers does seem to be a bit of a theme for this holiday!
If you look closely at the upper window of the tower you might just be able to see a cannon sticking out. Since 1877 this has been fired every day at noon in order to set the clocks across the city. We duly waited and were rewarded by seeing a flash of fire and a large cloud of smoke and hearing an extremely loud boom. Afterwards the man responsible opens the other window and leans out to receive a round of applause.
After that entertainment we went on a bit of a treasure hunt to find some elements of a work called ‘Nine Views’. This is essentially a scale model of the solar system which begins with a two meter diameter orb representing the sun and then has the other planets at the appropriate size and distance from the sun. So for example, the representation of Earth is less than two centimetres in diameter and about two hundred and twenty five metres from the sun. We found Mercury, Venus and Earth before deciding we had walked far enough. We would have had to walk nearly eight kilometres to get to Pluto, which was inuded before it was demoted from planet status.
So that concludes our tour of Zagreb. We will be moving on again tomorrow and it finally seems like I will be getting the sunny weather clothes out of the suitcase!
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