Croatia part 2: inland
March 19-20, Zadar-Paklenica-Plitvice Lakes
Beautiful nature was the name of the game in Croatia. From Zadar we drove to Paklenice National Park, karst landscape again, with steep, craggy mountains and cliffs, massive walls of rock that you just can't fit into a photograph. Woods and a rushing stream. This area was used to film some beloved old German Western films and little signs proudly pointed out the relevant spots. (But really, is there anything more bizarre than a German cowboys-and-Indians movie? Please don't get me started... I just end up making Germans who grew up on these bizarre-ities mad.)
That evening we drove to a tiny town called Irinovac, whose main purpose was clearly to support guesthouses and restaurants for all the tourists who come to see the Plitvice Lakes. More signs that German tourists are a mainstay here: The owner of our guesthouse preferred to speak German with us rather than English. Heiko told me he finally understood the weird feeling I have about being able to just waltz in everywhere and expect people to interact with me in my own language.
(Incidentally, German has proven useful to me in WAY more places than you would expect - with older people in Denmark; as a 16-year-old who spoke no French in Strasbourg, France; at a guesthouse in the Turkish countryside, whose owner had previously worked for years in Germany; in tourist areas of Croatia and the Netherlands; in a formerly-German-held region of Lithuania...)
The Plitvice Lakes are stunning. Sorry if I keep using that same descriptor - it just keeps being true. It turns out there's a reason why these lakes (actually more the associated waterfalls) seem to be the entire country's top-billed act.
We were there so early in the season that half of the park was still inaccessible due to snowmelt and flooding, but the half we saw was more than worth it. Picture a really cool, tall, cascading waterfall... and multiply it by dozens. Better yet, just check out the pictures. Some of the park's many wooden walkways were very nearly submerged under the rushing water - and again, we were among only a few people quietly wandering a site that was clearly set up to handle a parking lot full of tour buses in the high season. There were blue-green lakes and tons of little waterfalls - and tons of big waterfalls - and a cave we entered from the bottom, at water level, that turned out to be only a tiny part of an enormous funnel-shaped sinkhole.
Then the drive to Zagreb, back to the inland plains from the mountains, back to late winter weather after the balmy coast - which was not nearly as depressing as I feared. Arrival at night, windy. Zagreb is a post for another time, but I'll leave you with:
The pictures from Croatia! Clicking on this picture will take you to the whole album:
Croatia!
Beautiful nature was the name of the game in Croatia. From Zadar we drove to Paklenice National Park, karst landscape again, with steep, craggy mountains and cliffs, massive walls of rock that you just can't fit into a photograph. Woods and a rushing stream. This area was used to film some beloved old German Western films and little signs proudly pointed out the relevant spots. (But really, is there anything more bizarre than a German cowboys-and-Indians movie? Please don't get me started... I just end up making Germans who grew up on these bizarre-ities mad.)
That evening we drove to a tiny town called Irinovac, whose main purpose was clearly to support guesthouses and restaurants for all the tourists who come to see the Plitvice Lakes. More signs that German tourists are a mainstay here: The owner of our guesthouse preferred to speak German with us rather than English. Heiko told me he finally understood the weird feeling I have about being able to just waltz in everywhere and expect people to interact with me in my own language.
(Incidentally, German has proven useful to me in WAY more places than you would expect - with older people in Denmark; as a 16-year-old who spoke no French in Strasbourg, France; at a guesthouse in the Turkish countryside, whose owner had previously worked for years in Germany; in tourist areas of Croatia and the Netherlands; in a formerly-German-held region of Lithuania...)
The Plitvice Lakes are stunning. Sorry if I keep using that same descriptor - it just keeps being true. It turns out there's a reason why these lakes (actually more the associated waterfalls) seem to be the entire country's top-billed act.
We were there so early in the season that half of the park was still inaccessible due to snowmelt and flooding, but the half we saw was more than worth it. Picture a really cool, tall, cascading waterfall... and multiply it by dozens. Better yet, just check out the pictures. Some of the park's many wooden walkways were very nearly submerged under the rushing water - and again, we were among only a few people quietly wandering a site that was clearly set up to handle a parking lot full of tour buses in the high season. There were blue-green lakes and tons of little waterfalls - and tons of big waterfalls - and a cave we entered from the bottom, at water level, that turned out to be only a tiny part of an enormous funnel-shaped sinkhole.
Then the drive to Zagreb, back to the inland plains from the mountains, back to late winter weather after the balmy coast - which was not nearly as depressing as I feared. Arrival at night, windy. Zagreb is a post for another time, but I'll leave you with:
The pictures from Croatia! Clicking on this picture will take you to the whole album:
Croatia!