Capping the Zagreb Visit with an Organ Concert

Thursday, Aug. 11, 2016--Zagreb

Today was wrap-up day--getting around to things we still hadn't done since being here.  We started by going back up the hill to the Old Town.  We heard the canon go off at noon at the Lotrscak tower.  We looked into St. Mark's Church which has a beautiful tiled roof with symbols of Croatia.  We looked into a pharmacy in operation since 1355.  We wandered through the small streets we still had not explored.

Going back down the hill, we exchanged some more money to try to have enough Croatian Kunas to last us through Sunday when we will leave the country.  We saw the Orthodox Cathedral, walked through the Botanical Gardens, and explored several more streets lined with impressive buildings from the late 1800s/early 1900s.

In the evening, we headed to the Zagreb Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary arriving at 19:30 for a concert to begin at 20:00.  What a sneaky plan the priest had!!  He scheduled a mass at 19:00 that didn't end until 19:50 helping assure a full house for the concert and making it hard for us tourists to find a place to sit!  Fortunately, there were some folding chairs near the side doors, so we got two of those and set them up facing toward the organ loft.

The organ at the cathedral is said to be one of the ten best in the world.  It certainly is impressive both in size and in sound.  The concert consisted of the organ played by Katarina Javora and the trombone and baritone horn played by Ivan Mucic.  Mucic was much better on the trombone than on the baritone.  And Javora never let loose on the organ--always deferring to the horn player.  But it was a very good concert (and well attended thanks to the planning of the priest).

Oh, I forgot to mention....  As we sat there in the cathedral listening to the concert, we were underneath three large chandeliers that supposedly were originally hanging in a Las Vegas Casino before they were bought and donated to the church and installed here.