We were up and out of the hotel in Amsterdam by 8 this morning to catch our flight to Zagreb for the penultimate leg of our trip. Amsterdam airport is quite spread out and our check in gates were almost in a little annex. After security, our boarding gates were in the furthest end of one of the terminals and was a good 20 minute walk to get to. Our flight was delayed by an hour due to “technical difficulties” but we were up and away soon enough. On arrival our driver and tour guide was waiting at the terminal to take us to the hotel. He gave us a short history of Zagreb as we drove and will be our guide for the next couple of days.

After checking in we went to a Štrukli cooking course. Štrukli is a  traditional Croatian dish originating from the Hrvatsko Zagorje and Zagreb regions in northern Croatia. It consists of thin, hand-stretched dough filled with a creamy mixture of fresh cottage cheese, sour cream, and eggs. The filled dough is rolled, cut into segments, and is then baked. Similar to making Strudels, most of the stretching of the dough is done by the backs of the hands and before long the dough was as big as the table. While we waited for the Štrukli to cook, we tried a collection of Croatian local meats, cheeses and wines. The most unique thing we tried was Pumpkin Seed Oil which is a local speciality. It was deep green in colour and a very thick consistency with a district smell – and paired perfectly with the bread.

The Štrukli in itself was quite a treat and was a surprising taste – though thoroughly enjoyable.

Our tour guide had surprised us with tickets to the local “Video Game History Museum” which we visited after the cooking course. It was an incredible museum where they had collected and displayed gaming consoles all the way back from the early 60s. More impressively they had multiple arcade games, consoles and even Commodore games, that you could actually play with. It was a great way to spend a couple of hours at the end of the day.