This was the view when we woke up this morning, intending to get an early start on visiting Plitvice National Park.
We ended up getting to talk to both Emma and Allyson for a couple hours instead which was a fortunate to hear from both in one day. We fit breakfast and coffee in while we chatted with the girls, so we’re ready to make the short drive to the park.
We used the #2 entrance to the park and it was not busy at all, which delighted us since we had braced for big crowds. Once in the park we had a coffee and pastry to supplement our earlier food and planned our path for the day. The park did a great job building choices for seeing the park based on how long you have and how much you want to walk. We chose Program H for our day...
It was a rather long walk from the entrance to the first tram - the trams were pretty deluxe and the driver handled them like a race car.😳
Out of the tram, we started out walking tour - trails and paths were very well made and maintained. This was one of the first waterfalls we came to.
There were odd geological features throughout the park, like this hole in the ground where water disappeared, presumably to come out as a waterfall.
A good example of the nice pathways, and some of the cute people visiting the park.😊
We took a families pictures for them in front of this waterfall and they returned the favor.
This was Tammy’s favorite pic of the day.
No amount of pictures or videos really captures the incredible setting of the park, but we took a few to try to show more.
The color of this pool was shocking.
This is a dock where the electric boat picks up passengers - that is the real color of the water!
Here is the boat - we rode down the length of one of the bigger lakes which was relaxing (although we were hungry again).
Another spectacular view of the water color and a waterfall casually being beautiful.
Usually water may have nice color from a distance but look ordinary up close - this was the shoreline at our feet.
The boardwalks were all made from the local trees, posts, beams, railings and half-sawn walking planks - made them blend nicely into the surroundings. Of the paths that we walked on, at least 60% were these boardwalks.
The formations of the park are from the limestone erosion and mineral redistribution. This is one of the caves that resulted from this, which unfortunately invites unsavory vermin to take up residence.
The view from higher up the cave system looking down.
This was just a serene shot of the walkway, water and surrounding nature. This Is similar to the location here used by two cellists in a YouTube video (it‘s several minutes so watch at your discretion)
More beauty...
This is the largest waterfall group in the park, but no matter what we tried it was impossible to capture the scale and uniqueness of the scene.
We were at the park for more than 5 hours so went back to take a break at the apartment. This park was more than we expected, not only in its obvious beauty, but the excellent trails and the thought that had gone into how the huge number of people get distributed in the park while keeping the serene settings.
For dinner, we had seen several other menu items at the previous night’s restaurant so we headed back there but drove using a different route. Unfortunately, Google maps didn’t know that this road had been abandoned (and we may have been too stubborn to listen to the Dead End sign. We got to this bridge and drove across, suddenly wondering if we’d just found why they closed the road. Tammy may have lost a year as we started over and the boards all made noises.
We made it across but soon found that they’d closed the road just a bit further with a gate - so we got to go back over the bridge.
Clearly we made it but marked that as more good fortune realizing how quickly it could have gone bad.
Dinner was great again - we had a beef goulash and pasta with red sauce + pesto...the goulash couldn’t compete with the one we’d had in the small mountain town though. We had the same cocktails from the night before because they were fantastic and cheap - we even found that they would make them for take away! Don was in heaven with a Manhattan back at the apartment :-). We ended the day with some reading/writing and delicious nightcaps.
**Bonus Image**
This is a collage of the Croatian flag and the symbols for each of the National Parks that we’d visited - seemed like a fitting way to close this chapter!
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