Up after 8:00 am, we had a nice breakfast in our hotel and took one last walk around the Zadar old town peninsula, enjoying the sun, and sitting on the steps listening to the whale songs of the Sea Organ. We put off checking out until the last minute (11:00 am), since our bus to Plitvice Lakes didn't leave until 1:00 pm. That left us plenty of time to walk down to the bus station and do some shopping at the large Interspar market across the street. We got a pair of seedy rolls, some Camembert cheese, a pear, some salami with sliced cheese, a tube of mustard, and, for the first time in Croatia, two large bottles of sugar-free orange soda. After one last french-fry break at McDonalds, we caught our FlixBus right on time.
The bus was a double-decker, and we had the lower deck almost all to ourselves, with a table between our seats. It was a very comfortable two-hour ride up to the park, where we got let out on the highway with vague directions to go "that way" for a few hundred meters. There was no sidewalk, so we wheeled our bags as close to the edge of the road as we could, until, around a corner, we found the entrance to our hotel.
After checking in at 2:30 pm, we rushed right out to the park, to get in for our timed-entrance ticket, 3-4 pm, which is the latest anyone is let into the park. I wondered why. When we got to the gate, the young man who let us in, told us we had to pick a trail. We picked trail E around the upper lakes, mainly because it was the only trail we could complete in three hours.
Now, I know I should have researched this a little more carefully, but I somehow thought that most of our park visit would be aboard the boats that traverse the lakes. That's not the case. The boats just take you across the lake to the other side, where you walk around the lake and pick up the shuttle bus at the other end.
Plitvice Lakes is really unique. Imagine a stair-step series of lakes, each one higher than the previous one. Part of the time you are walking on wooden paths, like the one in the picture here, which I found kind of disconcerting. There are gaps between the slats, which are fairly crude, and it left me with a feeling of falling. In addition, the walkway bounces a little when someone walks by.
Because all of the people who had 3-4 pm tickets had to take the shorter trail, there were quite a few people at first. Soon, however, our 70+ selves were left bringing up the rear, and so it didn't seem too crowded.
Plitvice Lakes is internationally known for its beauty. If you look at the picture above, you can see the stair-step layout of the lakes. Where the falls are behind Kathy is another lake. That mean you are constantly climbing.
This is one of the tallest falls, about 90 feet. The geology of Plitvice Lakes is very unusual. The water flowing over the limestone dissolves it, forming calcium carbonate deposits (the white stuff that forms around your shower, if you have hard water). These deposits thicken, becoming a rock called travertine, which creates new dams, so the park is constantly changing.
As the sun got lower in the sky, we started hurrying, climbing higher and higher. Part of the trail was wooden walk-ways, and part of the trail reminded us of the Appalachian trail we had hiked a few summers ago in Connecticut. There were roots and rocks, and we constantly had to watch our footing.
Around 6:10 pm we really started to worry. The last shuttle bus was at 6:30, and, every time we thought that we had reached the end of the trail, we turned a bend to find a new lake. And so, we kept climbing higher and higher, apparently the only people on the trail.
Finally, we came across two other couples, and made sure that we were at least traveling in the right direction. As we approached the end of the trail, we saw a shuttle bus pulling away from a distance. I thought that we were going to have to sleep in the forest. Fifteen minutes later, when we finally got to the top of the trail, I was surprised to see about twenty people still there. I pulled out my phone, and was relieved to see that it was only 5:45 pm, not 6:45. (The fact that the sun hadn't completely set should have been a clue. We knew from Zadar, that sunset was around 6:45.)
On to Zagreb
When we finally got back to our hotel, we were too tired to even go down to the restaurant. We pulled out our supplies and had a picnic in the room. We had planned to get up early and do the lower lakes in the morning, but, we agreed, we were done hiking. Since we hadn't yet made bus reservations for our next stop, I went online (FlixBus) and bought tickets for the 9:45 am bus to Zagreb.
In the morning, we thought we'd beat the breakfast rush and go down at 7:00 am. That was a mistake. There were several large Chinese tour groups visiting the hotel, and they had to leave by 8:00 am, so they were all in the breakfast room. There must have been more than two-hundred people eating all at once.
When we left, we asked the fellow who gave us a ride to the bus stop about the group. He said that there had been almost no Chinese tourists for the last three years (because of the Covid lockdowns there), but that now the tour groups had started coming again.
As we left, I tried to make sense of this sticker that was above the toilet. "For your safety we kindly ask you to use the bathtub/shower unit." I couldn't figure out what that was for.
The young man from the hotel who drove us down to the bus stop said that because it was a national park, they weren't allowed to build sidewalks or widen the road, so it wasn't safe to walk along the side, as we'd done when we arrived. Our Flixbus was only about half full; we didn't get a table this time (it was only a single-decker bus), but our seats were comfortable.
We got into Zagreb a little after noon and walked about 20 minutes to Annie's Bed and Breakfast where we dropped off our bags. The young lady who was there cleaning the rooms told us our room would be ready after 3:00 pm, so we went out to explore the city. The first thing we did was find the train station and purchase tickets to Ljubljana, our destination on Sunday. Then we got a one-day tram ticket and set out to explore the town.
We took a tram to the center of town, Jelacic Square, and started our Rick Steve's walking tour, which led us through the Octagon Shopping Gallery from the early 1900s.
The covered arcade reminded me of similar galleries in Paris, and of pictures I've seen of the main gallery in Milan. I'll compare them when we visit Milan next week. The next stop on the Zabreb City Walk was to take the funicular to one of the older, medieval upper towns named Gradec. Unfortunately, the funicular wasn't working and we weren't about to climb a thousand stairs after our hike the previous day.
Instead, we ducked into the Tunnel Gric, which travels beneath Gradac. The residents of Zadar used this tunnel for shelter in World War II, and, more recently, in the 1990 Yugoslav wars.
Instead of taking us to the upper town, however, it let us out right where we started the walk at Jelacic Square. The man on the horse behind us is Josip Jelacic, a 19th century governor who aligned the Croats with Austria against Hungary. During the Yugoslav era, Jelacic was considered a reactionary nationalist, and so the statue was dismantled and stored away. When Croatia broke away in 1991, he returned, although this time facing south, towards the Serbs, instead of north towards the Hungarians.
While we were on the square, we visited the Tourist Information office and found out that we were using our tram pass incorrectly. Apparently we needed to validate it on the bus, directly behind the driver, or we'd be fined 100E. She also told us that the pass was not a 24 hour pass, but expired at midnight. We decided to walk for the rest of the day, and to validate the pass tomorrow.
At the TI we found out that we didn't need to climb the endless stairs to get to the upper town, but could simply walk around the Cathedral. The Cathedral was covered with scaffolding and in the lot in front of it, you could see the pieces of the towers, each one numbered.
By now we were ready for an early dinner. We ate at La Struk, famous for its local ravioli called strukli. These are baked and covered with cheese. Kathy had the truffle, while I had the blueberry. (I wanted the cinnamon and apple or the honey and walnut, but they were both sold out.) While we were sitting at lunch we had a great conversation with a young man at the table next to us. Leonard is a PhD student in Zurich, working for IBM research in Physics.
After eating, we walked a few blocks to Chocolate 041 for gelato. The proprietor had played professional soccer in Milan where he learned to make Italian-style gelato. When he returned to Zagreb, he opened this popular shop.
Since we wanted to save our tram pass for tomorrow, we walked a half-hour back to our hotel. Tomorrow our train leaves at 12:50, so we'll have time to finish our Zagreb city walk.
Great to read your adventures 🙏☺️☺️
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