If you follow me on Facebook, you probably know that I spent a week in Croatia recently, in celebration of my friend Becky's significant birthday. She wanted to go somewhere awesome and inexpensive, which makes for a short list. She settled on Croatia and asked if I'd like to go along. I'm closer than most, so it's easier for me to get there. After poking around a bit, I got really excited about the trip and ended up doing a fair bit of the planning for it.
Becky had set aside a week for the trip, plus a couple of days on either end for traveling and recovery. She really wanted to go to Zagreb,
Plitviče Lakes National Park, Split, and Dubrovnik. We decided to rent a car rather than take trains so we could keep our own schedule. Then it was just a matter of deciding what to do.
I found a day-long tour of the national park, including pickup from and dropoff to Zagreb. That consolidated things a bit and made travel easier by one stop. Still, three cities in a week is a lot. For you planners out there, consider whether you want to skim the surface on more places or really delve into one or two places. We compromised on three. I found tours for our non-travel days: one in Zagreb, two in Split, and one in Dubrovnik. It was such an action-packed week that I decided to devote one blog post to each city, rather than doing one monster post. So, although I posted photos of Zagreb to FB, here's that portion of the trip.
We flew from Munich to Zagreb (an hour flight -- sort of like Austin to Dallas), arriving in the afternoon. We snagged our rental car and set off for our AirBnB.
Side note about AirBnB: it's often my preferred method of travel if you want something over and above what a hotel offers. In this case, we wanted separate beds and the ability to do laundry. This you can have in Croatia for about $60/night -- bargain!
Our original AirBnB cancelled, so we ended up scheduling another one at the last minute. The location was good, but I had several (between 6-10) beetles in my bedroom. Bugs give me nightmares, so that didn't make me happy. We did pass along the info to the owner, and she said she'd take care of it.
The downtown area was fairly close to our place, about a ten minute walk away. As soon as we got settled, we started researching dinner places. There are a lot of great choices in Zagreb, so it's hard to choose just one! We finally settled on a crêpe place called Le Mika. Little did we know what we were in for!
Mika is the owner and chef of Le Mika. His head waiter decided not to come to work that day, and we arrived early for dinner, so we got a lot of his attention. He told us how he got into restaurants, why he's in Zagreb, and which foods and wines to order. We took him at his word and ordered everything. Usually when I'm hungry, the first bite of food is heavenly, and then that experience tapers off bite by bite. Not so at this place. I had a traditional buckwheat crêpe (or Galette) with chicken and ratatouille. So fantastically delicious!
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| Urp. |
For dessert, Mika recommended the traditional Crêpe Suzette, as well as a crêpe of his own creation called L'Aumônière: a crêpe tied up in a parcel, filled with apple confit caramelised in salted butter, with pieces of Breton biscuit and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
If your mouth isn't watering right now, I'm not sure we can be friends anymore.
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| Nice presentation, no? Now imagine it tastes 20x better than it looks... |
The layers of flavors in both the entree and the dessert were so complex, so layered. It was a serious foodgasm. I'd go back to Zagreb just to eat there again.
We went back the morning of the day we left to drive to Split. It was Croatia's independence day, so we were relieved to find it open for breakfast. I had an amazing Croque Madame. Sadly, they weren't serving dessert until noon, and we had to go. I died a little inside.
Anyway, back on track! (Track? What track?)
On Sunday, we went to
Plitviče Lakes National Park. The gorgeousness of that park cannot be overstated. It rained for a chunk of the day -- hardly an ideal way to view a park -- but it's still one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I found a tour that was highly rated, and it was so worthwhile to do it that way. We first stopped at a small village called Rastoke. Super ugly, right?
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| If you like waterfalls, this is a tiny taste of what's to come! |
We proceeded to the park after this stop. We'd been warned to get food in Rastoke. Since the park hosts millions of visitors each year, our guide Karlo told us the park food is iffy. We first went to a coffee shop (Becky's addiction, not mine) where the staff was more intent on serving those who were doing shots of grappa than those who wanted coffee (it was about 10:30am). By the time we got to the restaurant, they were out of food. Sad panda. So when we got to the park, we had a 15-minute window in which to get lunch. We each got a sausage plate (2 sausages and french fries). I don't remember the last time I've eaten so fast. It was awful. But the rest of the day made up for it.
All the tour groups were huddled in the area where we had our "lunch," so Karlo decided to go around the park the other direction from all of the groups, in hopes of not running into so many crowds. I think that alone was worth the price. He does this tour 5-6 times a week, so he's super familiar with how everything works there.
First view of the park... stunning, but those clouds look like they're about to open up! And they do, for most of the day.
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| Look: waterfalls! |
The park consists of several lakes in a series. There's limestone that forms the edge of each lake, and each one spills into the next. So you start at lower altitudes and climb a lot, or at least that's what we did. My FitBit told me I did ten miles and 79 flights in the park that day. I did a few more steps to hit 30k steps and 100 flights. Because I'm an idiot who doesn't know when to stop.
The color of the water is insane and really hard to capture. It varies from bright green to turquoise to intense blue, depending on the minerals in the water and the angle of the sun.
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| Helloooooo, tiny ant people! |
As you can see, there are walkways all through the park -- wooden elevated sidewalks. No railings, and not a solid surface. In case you're unaware, it's mostly Americans who are super-preoccupied with safety. I'd love to know how many people end up in the drink on an average day here.
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| More waterfalls! |
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| The fall colors make me so happy! |
This waterfall, for obvious reasons, is named the Big Sprinkler.
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| Imagine: another waterfall! |
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| Becky, my Buddy, and me. With a WATERFALL. |
Note our rain jackets (mine is a full length poncho provided by the tour guide). We're bedraggled but happy to be seeing such beauty.
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| Water views are my happy place. I spent all day doing the happy sigh. |
Early in the day, I hustled up to the front of the group to get a shot of a path through trees. It's one of my favorite visual metaphors. Karlo said, "oh, you'll get your path through trees later. I'll let you know." True to his word, he summoned me to the front later in the day so I could get this shot. I love you, Karlo.
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| What are you people doing in my path photo? Go away! |
Karlo reminded us a couple of times that we should look back in addition to seeing what's ahead. Another metaphor. He was totally right, though.
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| People! Can't you see I'm taking pictures here? |
Here's our tour group in front of the biggest waterfall in the park, which we saw at the end of the day. Karlo is at top left.
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| Fun group! |
This is a tiny subset of the photos I took that day. It was a long and exhausting but highly satisfying day.
Next: on to Split!
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