The greens and blues of the waters in Plitvice Lakes National Park enchant the eye. But then, almost everything about this place does that.
When making decisions about what to do in Zagreb this week, I spent some time looking at different tours, and found a tour that transports me from Zagreb to Split, stopping at the national park halfway.
This immediately struck me as a great solution to a real problem, because I’m accustomed to using trains for transport in Europe, but the train system here is neither robust nor fast.
My other options for a trip from Zagreb to Split were either a flight – although I’d rather not spend that much time in an airport – or driving. Driving would generally be fine here, except I always worry about parking in other countries. With the exception of big cities, driving overseas isn’t difficult, but the process of finding a parking spot can be cryptic. And, historically, its the parking that has tended to end up in a citation.
Or a car being towed.
So when I found a tour that also made the drive for me, this was an easy choice.
And I’m glad I did it this way, because otherwise I wouldn’t have seen this place. Except when I’m hiking or diving, my travels tend to focus on cities, reflecting an interest in history and historical places.
If I wouldn’t have done this transfer, I would have never seen this chain of sixteen pristine lakes cascading through the mountains.
I would have never seen waterfall after majestic waterfall.
I would have never seen torrents of water gushing through the underbrush, all of which left me wondering why the grasses here never wash away. It defies logic.
And I would have never wondered at the brilliant shades of blue-green, a product of mineral content and algae.
After several hours following the planked pathways from the top to the bottom of the series of lakes, we lunched and returned to the road. In just over two hours, the Adriatic came into view, and it was about 45 minutes later that our driver left us outside the walls of Diocletian’s Palace.
The light of day was fading around us, and the seafront promenade obscured things, but looking at the elaborate wall rising above the businesses in front of us, it was clear that this was old, and this was big!
My hotel lay that way, so I shouldered my bag and hurried into the nearest gate, promptly finding myself in a dimly lit catacomb. But my routing was correct.
I was just passing through Diocletian’s basement, the same as countless others before me.
And I continued to my destination with an absolutely stupid grin on my face.
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