What an amazing day!! After a good sleep, we woke at 5am feeling really refreshed. We set off at 6.30am and walked to get our hire car. We were a little anxious about this part of the day, because we had booked the car for 7am, but today is a public holiday and the hire car place closed before we had a chance to go and confirm yesterday. Luckily for us, a really lovely young guy was working at 7am! We filled in the paperwork and set off for Plitvice Lakes (pronounced plit-viss-a).
We had considered a few options for how we would visit Plitvice, and we are really glad we settled for hire car and not a tour. So long as you leave early, you beat most of the massive crowds and tour buses, and you also have as much or little time in each section as you would like.
Mum drove to the lakes like a pro and only pressed the windscreen wiper instead of the indicator once. We had fun travelling at 130km/h on the highway! The drive took about two hours and we parked in the already quite full car park one.
A decade ago, not many people had really heard of Plitvice as a tourist destination. But thanks to (or no thanks to) social media, it’s becoming more and more popular and is now packed every day. About 1.4 million people visit annually. It was founded as a national park in 1949, and recognised by UNESCO in 1979.
We got our tickets and began hiking route C. The park is extremely well laid out with plenty of signs and options. This particular route took us to the largest waterfall, small pools and everything in between. Some parts of our day we were surrounded by huge crowds, and other parts we had an entire section of track to ourselves. We also got to walk through the woods (where a sign informed us that bears are about in Croatia!) and across the water on various boardwalks.
Your entrance ticket includes a boat ride across one of the larger lakes. While queuing, we saw a man who was the spitting image of my grandpa. I couldn’t help myself, I took a photo of Mum eating an ice cream and “coincidentally” got him in the background!
All day we were absolutely amazed by our surroundings. So many places you visit are disappointing compared to photos, but not this one! The green and blue hues of the lakes and pools were breathtaking. It was a pleasure to walk around and take it all in for five hours. Once we got to the very edge of the park, we caught the bus back to entrance one. The last stretch of track we had to walk to the gate treated us with elevated views of the park, where we got to appreciate how far we had travelled throughout the day and the vastness of the National park. We also checked out a cool cave.
Then it was my turn to drive. I’d never driven on the other side of the road before! It was fun. We decided to stop at a town called Karlovac on the way back and I copped a few roundabouts which were tricky in reverse but all was ok. In some sections of the drive, the traffic was really bad. It’s the end of a long weekend so I suspect a lot of people had escaped Zagreb for the weekend and were heading back.
We enjoyed the view from the hill of Dubovac Castle. The castle was built in the 13th century, but is closed on Mondays and public holidays. Karlovac’s old town was built in the shape of a six pointed star, which originally had ramparts and towers enclosing the old town. Once we were finished at the castle, we walked around town a bit. It was a ghost town due to the holiday. Some buildings were really dilapidated, and some were done up and beautiful.
We got back to Zagreb and dropped off the car. Then we headed to a restaurant Mum had found online. The food was absolutely beautiful, and all the staff were super friendly. We have found people here to be very welcoming and helpful, and lots have a great sense of humour, too! We had three courses and a 500mL cider each and it was only $24 Aussie each. Restoran Lanterna Na Dulca - check it out!
On the way back to our hostel, we watched a few minutes of Iran va Portugal and saw Christiano Ronaldo miss a penalty shot. I’m very excited to watch Australia play tomorrow!
Now for another good night’s sleep. We’ve been out for 15 hours today!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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