Travel update #3: Zagreb, Croatia

We went for another walking session in Zagreb after the rain finally went on pause in the second half of the afternoon. We visited another portion of the city before ending up near the restaurant where we planned to have dinner, a Sri Lanka restaurant called “Curry Bowl” which again was rated five stars. It was absolutely delicious. But just before going for the dinner we stopped at a little bar because the rain started again. It was “apéro time”. All in all we enjoyed Zagreb: a nice, relativelyely quiet European city where we always felt in safe.

Tomorrow heading off to Plitvice Lakes National Park for two days. It will be quite a different environment.

Travel update #2: Zagreb, Croatia

I’m currently writing this from our room as there are some heavy showers outside. We had a chance to walk a lot since morning in Zagreb and had a great lunch at the restaurant called “Heritage” which is close to our B&B. It’s a very small place where only maybe ten people can have lunch at the same timee (counting those 3 tables outside!). They make absolutely great sandwiches with Croatian ingredients (ham, truffle spread, local cheese, etc.). We also all a great walnuts salad and a drink. Eating is our great pleasure when visiting a place like Zagreb. This place has five stars and is not that expansive.

Back to our room, I’m writing this post after I imported my first batch of images (62 in all) and started to tag which one I would process. All this is done on my iPad, Files and Photomator. Works great so far. The only thing is that I forgot to change the time zone so my pictures got the wrong time stamp. Not that big of a deal. If the internet speed was better, I would have included an image to this post, but that’s not the case. Too bad.

Travel update #1: Zagreb, Croatia

First full day in Croatia. It is the morning here in Zagreb. Yesterday, we arrived and spent the first few hours wandering in the city center where all the night life is happening. It was the time to spot the places that we were to revisit later (today). We were tired following our two flights by night.

There was a soccer match at 9PM and people were quite excited and were looking forward to it. It ended end up in a tie 1-1 Croatia against Italia. I don’t care too much about soccer but Croatian do quite a lot!

I didn’t take my camera with me as I felt my iPhone would be enough. It was a good call anyway because it was rather late in the evening. We had dinner at a restaurant and had goulash and beer. It was a typical plate for Croatian apparently. We came back to the B&B exhausted by our air travelling. I do feel the jet lag this morning but I expect thing to improve in the next two to three days.

This blog post was a writing exercise to practice my daily journaling while traveling abroad.

I decided to use Day One for my travel journaling instead of Apple’s Journal. Reason being very simple: Day One is available on all my devices. Most of my text probably won’t be shared, but if I decide to publish someone, I’ll use the Day One export feature.

Update: sadly, images aren’t exported while exporting in Markdown format. Not surprising, but it’s a nearly a dealbreaker.

Last minutes adjustments before traveling: revisited the “on vacation” focus mode on my iPhone to make sure to receive notifications from certains apps1, updated the home screen and lock screen wallpapers to be more in line with traveling mode. I also bought and installed my eSIM from Airalo2. Decided not to renew Halide subscription but will I’ll try to use it anyway over Apple’s camera app3.


  1. I’m excluding all work-related apps, of couse. ↩︎

  2. They offer a great buying experience and usually flawless when I travel abroad. ↩︎

  3. Photomator can easily open and edit images from Halide camera. ↩︎

Fun fact about me: I rarely visit websites and search for photos of my travel destinations before leaving my country. I prefer the full surprise. Zagreb, wait for me!

Pondering

In a week, I’ll be preparing to fly to Croatia for a three-week vacation with my wife. I’m still considering several aspects of the trip. How much blogging should I do during this time? Should I stay quiet and focus entirely on my vacation and photography? What camera equipment should I bring? Should I bring my MacBook Air in addition to my iPad Pro?

I need to decide the right balance between being present in the moment and documenting the journey through my blog. While I enjoy sharing my experiences, I also want to fully immerse myself in the trip without the constant pressure of content creation. As for the camera gear, I’ll need to carefully assess what I’ll actually use versus what I might pack just in case. The MacBook Air could be helpful for editing photos on the go, but the iPad Pro is a more compact and convenient option. Ultimately, I want to travel light and focus on making the most of this vacation with my wife.

I still have a week to figure this out.