We got ourselves out of bed very early on Sunday and checked out of our hotel to take the bus to the Plitvice Lakes National Park in central Croatia. We took a free apple from the front desk and then dragged our occasionally noisy suitcase back out to the bus station. Luckily we came in by bus, so it was easy to find again. Once there, we scouted around until we found a worker who told us which bus would take us where we wanted to go. There were a lot of buses in the station, but we had tickets on a particular bus, and so we waited there for a few minutes until it showed up. We snacked on the apple and the cheese leftover from last night’s second restaurant.
Soon, the bus pulled up, we showed the printouts of our tickets that we had bought online, stashed our suitcase underneath, and got on the bus. Simple, easy. As the bus left the station we noticed that they had free wifi on board, which made things easy for us later on. We were traveling without any kind of data plan or SIM cards, so anytime we could get wifi it made the trip easier.
The bus ride lasted more than two hours, so we settled in to watch the scenery, sleep, and listen to our fellow passengers talking. Next to us was a couple of women who had met for the first time. Apparently one of the women was backpacking around Europe from Singapore, and somebody she knew connected her with the other woman, and American who lives in Germany, to guide her around Plitvice Lakes. They spoke in English, and so naturally we overheard everything they talked about for two hours. Unfortunately, the American lady didn’t seem to like silence so kept a constant monologue going for the whole trip. At one point she started preaching the benefits of an Indian doctor who made some kind of special tea to fight cancer, and the poor Singaporean lady (and us as well) had to sit through a sales pitch on this magical tea. Sometimes it is nicer to travel where nobody speaks your language.
Out the windows of the bus the countryside passed quickly. At first on the plains outside Zagreb there was just corn and green fields, but as we got farther away the scenery turned to grass, groves of trees and rivers. I was struck by the similarities to Northern Sonoma County – it seemed like we were heading to Healdsburg or Guerneville. The bus stopped at some seemingly random spots to pick people up. One guy got off the bus at a pit stop and we waited a few extra minutes for him to come back, but apparently he just left. The bus driver shrugged, and then we continued on.
Around 8:30 in the morning we arrived at the first entrance of the Plitvice Lakes National Park. We were able to lock our suitcase in a special cabin they keep for just that purpose, and then we got in a line to enter the park. The wait was only about 20 minutes, and then we got inside.
Plitvice Lakes was Kuniko’s request, and the seed for entire trip plan to Eastern Europe – everything started with this. We were both really excited to be here, and the weather was partly cloudy but mostly blue skies and cool temperatures, which was perfect for hiking around. The park is huge, with the shortest course in the park lasting 2-3 hours. We chose the 3-4 hour course, but you could spend several days in the park easily. We crested the first hill of the entrance, and we were treated to a dramatic view of the tall waterfalls above one of the first lakes.
The waterfalls were beautiful, and the first thing you noticed was the emerald green color of the pools underneath. Once we got closer we realized just how clear the water was. You could easily see the bottom of the pools, and even the deeper lakes were clear enough to see deeply into the water. The park was designed to minimize human contact with the lakes, but also get everyone as close as possible. That meant wooden platforms everywhere that held visitors, but the platforms usually had no handrails, so you had to be careful to watch your step and be sure the people around you knew what they were doing and where they were going. At first I thought it was a little dangerous, but oddly the absence of handrails made everyone more careful and alert and probably minimized accidents. It sounds backwards, but I guess it works.
At the beginning of the trail we looked into the water and saw some fish swimming around. I made a big effort to take some pictures of these fish, but after walking a bit we both realized that there were fish everywhere. These lakes were like fish heaven – no fishermen around, clean water, and the current of the ubiquitous waterfalls was always bringing food by for the fish to eat. The fish schooled and swam against the current, just waiting for the food to come to them. Nice life!
The lakes were kind of terraced, so we started at the lower lakes, and the next lake was just a little higher, giving rise to plenty of waterfalls as each lake naturally spilled over into the next one. We walked along the platforms at our own pace, taking pictures here and there and breathing in the clean air. As the day warmed up a bit I found myself tempted to jump into the clear water. Maybe people would think it was an accident, right? I could flail a bit and pretend that I tripped? However, we behaved, and everyone else did, too.
We were glad to have arrived on the early side, as the park was big enough to absorb a lot of visitors spread out (over more than a hundred square miles). However as the day went on the visitors increased, and the size of the platforms and paths meant there were some natural bottlenecks, especially when there was a dramatic photo spot. Around 11 am we found a mid-point pit stop, and decided to take a break for restrooms and lunch. The pit stop was a boat pier, and visitors could catch the park boats to take you to other points within the park. There was already a pretty good line of people waiting for the boats, but we went over to a picnic area, and set up a little lunch. We got a couple glasses of wine, opened our cheese, and also bought a grilled pork burger from the park cafe. Life is good!
One interesting point to me was that during the trip, the price of wine was often listed by the liter. So, for example some white wine, it would say 40 Kuna per liter. Initially I thought that meant that you had to buy the whole liter – so I ordered one liter of white wine. The staff was surprised and handed over a whole bottle, and then I realized that in fact you could order a standard glass, and they would pour like 150 mL of wine in it, and you would pay that portion of the liter price. What a relief – if we drank the liter of wine we would have never made it to the end of the hike.
After a leisurely lunch we got in line and then took the boat across the biggest lake to another station and continued our waterfall tour. The waterfalls in this area were much wider, and it made for some more dramatic pictures. I couldn’t get over how refreshing the water looked – can you imagine a time when water all over the world looked like that? It was nice to know that at least here the water was untouched by industry and pollution.
We reached the farthest point for our course, so we decided to head back. We were hiking through a beautiful park, but we were still hiking, and we had a long trip ahead of us so we wanted to save some energy for future sightseeing. We looped back towards the entrance that we started with, and faced lots of people coming into the park for the first time. It sometimes became hard to walk. We had come through already and had seen everything (and photographed the sights already), so we could move quickly back towards the exit. At the end of the route we turned back and enjoyed the sights one last time, and then left the park.
The good news was that we had tickets for a bus ride to our next city, but the bad news was that we had almost three hours to kill before the bus came. Kuniko had the very logical idea to ask if we could change our bus tickets to an earlier bus, and after a quick check of the schedule, the staff at the bus stop did that for us. We got our suitcase and left just a few minutes later. Smooth!
Since we had free wifi on the bus we contacted our next hotel to let them know we were coming in earlier than planned. We had arranged a pick up at the bus station, but since we were coming earlier we let them know that it wasn’t necessary and we’d head to the hotel directly. We didn’t hear back from them during the subsequent three hour bus ride, however.
The bus ride from the National Park to Zadar was completely different from the previous ride. Here the terrain went from forests and green to high rocky plateaus. The bus took us over some very high rocky mountains with long views of open desert, then back down along a narrow green river that ran through quaint little towns. Some of the towns were built around bridges, and there were remains of fortresses that once guarded the area against enemies. War in this country is a memory but not a faint memory – you could sometimes see bullet holes in old cement walls as we passed by. The bus driver kept up with his social life by talking on his mobile phone with lots of different people the whole drive, and he played American oldies on the radio for background music.
At last we arrived at the bus station of Zadar. The town of Zadar was my request for this trip. The tourist towns of Dubrovnik and Split were popular destinations in many guidebooks, but I chose Zadar because it is a bit off the main tourist path, but still with lots of interesting things to see and do. It has a long history and the walled city right on the ocean seemed like a good way to experience the Adriatic Coast.
We got a taxi ride from the bus station, and he brought us in close to the hotel, which was actually an apartment that we were renting for a couple of nights. The taxi dropped us off, and I used my GPS to get as close as possible until we found the apartment. It was then that we realized that there was no check-in desk here, and our host was expecting us to come in on a later bus and maybe they didn’t check their email that often. Uh-oh.
Without phone service we were in a little trouble. We figured the best thing to do would be to find a public phone and call from there, but unsurprisingly there weren’t many phone booths around. Instead I went into a little pizza shop nearby and begged the staff to call for me. A very nice waitress offered to help (in English), and she made a series of calls while he boss looked on with a little frown of disapproval. Finally she made contact with the hotel staff, who said they’d send someone over to let us in the apartment. I thanked the waitress (and the boss) and we soon met up with staff. She rode up on a bicycle, and apologized for the mis-communication (she said she got our email but she didn’t say why there was no response). We followed her up four flights of stairs (no elevator, sorry) and got set up in our little apartment for the next two days.
At first we were a little ambivalent about the apartment, but later after opening up all the windows and blinds, and enjoying the ocean view and cool breeze we felt a lot better about it. The outside of the apartment looked a little dingy, but the interior was quite clean and nice.
After dropping off our luggage and a quick refresh we went outside to explore Zadar a little bit. Our first stop was the pizza place where we made our phone calls. We wanted to have a beer there to cool down and patronize the place that helped us out. The same waitress brought us some cold beers and seemed happy to know that we were able to finally get into our apartment OK.
After a short stay there, we crossed the main pedestrian footbridge onto the peninsula that held the old walled city of Zadar. The weather was perfect – cool but hot in the sunlight, the sun was going down over the Adriatic Sea to the west, and we walked around in flip flops and shorts taking in the sights. It was Sunday, and the old town was filled with tourists enjoying themselves with shopping and sightseeing. Apparently Zadar is not yet on the American or Japanese tourist destination lists yet, but certainly it is on the Croatian and Italian ones. We saw lots of locals walking around, and the walled city was pretty packed with people. After the crowds at the exit of Plitvice Lakes we were once again surrounded by people here. It was a little overwhelming, but we still walked around taking pictures for a while, and then stopped for dinner at a restaurant that we chose at random.
We had a little Croatian white wine with our dinner. I had Jack Dory with a creamy truffle sauce (very nice) and Kuniko had some kind of grilled whitefish. Both were good but not exceptional – so far nothing so different of mind-blowing. Still, after the busy day we could sit outside on a busy alleyway and watch the world go by. The atmosphere felt remarkably like Venice, with the old narrow streets and maze-like structure of the city. In actuality we weren’t so far from Venice – it was just a ferry ride away, and I think a lot of the tourists in the city were from that area.
After dinner we walked down the cobblestone streets back towards our apartment, and finally settled in for the night. It was another long day, but it sure felt like we accomplished a lot. Tomorrow we’d have the whole day to look around Zadar and do some relaxation, and we were both looking forward to that.
