Plitivice Lakes National Park - Croatia

Hello from Croatia!!!

Budapest was amazing and it was sad to leave, however, Croatia is BEAUTIFUL. Our first stop in Croatia was Zagreb where we ate with some locals on their lunch break at a traditional Croatian restaurant. It was $7 Canadian for soup, salad, bread, calamari with vegetables and pancakes (crepes!). We were pleasently surprised with how affordable it was and grabbed our rental car for the drive to Plitivice Lakes National Park in the interior of Croatia.

The park is the oldest national park in Croatia and is also where the first shots in the Croatian - Yugoslavian war were fired. In 1991 a park policeman was the first casualty. On the drive from Zagreb to the park we actually saw numerous abandoned Serb houses and buildings damaged from the war.

Below are all pictures from the park except the last two....those pictures are from when we attempted to be cheap and walk our way into the park. We were given directions from the lady at the sobe (Croatian bed and breakfast) we were staying at...however....english was her second language and the directions did NOT translate. We ended walking deep into the Croatian forest which had an eerie fog around it. After 20 minutes Ian had the sense to make us turn around, take the car and pay the park entrance fee.

The park was one of a kind with 16 waterfalls and two large lakes. The beautiful colouring of the lakes which can be seen in some of the pictures is from calcium carbonate which is a mineral deposit from the nearby limestone (the same thing that makes hardwater hard).