Croatia

Our 10 days in Croatia have come to an end. We are actually on the flight to Switzerland right now. We have been so busy and have been so tired at night that I got pretty behind on our blogs. I am catching up no though! Below is our itinerary for Croatia: 

Dubrovnik- 3 days
Split- 3 days
Krka National Park- 1 day
Plitvice Lakes National Park- 2 days
Zagreb- 1 day

After a really early morning drive to the Glasgow airport and a long day of travel we were absolutely wiped when we got to Dubrovnik and could not wait to get to our hotel. We had to catch a bus from the airport into the city. It should have only taken about 30 min but their was a crash and we got stuck on the road forever! The road into town is basically a switch back along the mountain side all the way down to the water and is 1 lane on each side. The crash caused one lane to be completely blocked so the traffic going both ways had to take turns on the 1 lane going back and forth. It took over an hour to get into town and I was sooo car sick (so was Ross). The place we were in staying was right in the center of old town and was really hard to find. There are tons of little alleys and unnamed streets so it made it very difficult to figure out where we were. Plus, it was so hot! After walking up about 40 stairs in some random alley we finally found our apartment. It was basically set up like a studio with 2 single beds, a bathroom, and a small kitchen. It was nice but very tiny! We couldn’t even stand up straight in the shower haha! I was constantly worried I was going to bonk my head on something. By this point it was early evening and we were hungry and exhausted. We wandered around the streets a bit and wound up in a small square that you could tell had a market during the day. There were a few restaurants so we glanced at the menus quickly and settled on a spot. We basically picked it because it was cheap…other than that, all the restaurants in the area looked the same. About half way through our meal we looked up and noticed the restaurant we were at was completely packed and there was a huge line of people waiting to eat! We were in shock. I mean, the food was fine, but nothing to wait in line for.

Side Note: We walked by the restaurant each night to see if there was a line again and sure enough, there was! We still don’t quite know why it was so popular.

We had a lazy morning the next day just getting caught up on life. Laundry, expenses, travel research, etc. We pulled a classic “tourist” move and decided to get out site seeing at noon…the hottest part of the day. The old town part of Dubrovnik, where we were staying, is a completely walled city. It was designed that way back in the 16th century to protect the city from evaders. It looks very unique but keeps any breeze from getting into the city so it is really hot. Also, the streets are very narrow so all the tourists are trapped in a very small area with no where to expand out. Although it was crowded and hot, the old town is very cool looking. They have done a wonderful job preserving the city, even after multiple invasions and earthquakes. The narrow streets and alleyways are very picturesque with cobble stone walkways and shuttered windows with flower pots. We tried to do our own make shift walking tour (we didn’t want to pay for one since we are on a budget) Luckily, since the old town is so small, it only took an hour or 2 to see everything. One of the coolest parts of Croatia is that the water is very clean. There are old fountains all over the city where you can fill up your water bottles and it is completely safe to drink. We finished our walking tour and were dying of heat. Between the crowds and the sun it was scorching! I had read online about this little bar that was stuck on the side of the city walls overlooking the water. We were fed up with the heat and crowds so we went in search of it. There was basically an old wooden sign that said “beautiful view & cold drinks”. We followed it down this random alley. On the left there was a very small arch way in the side of the wall with a wrought iron gate over it. We looked through the gate and there was a set of stairs. We walked down them, and there was the bar….perched on the side of the city walls. Buza Bar had no running water, no toilet, and only took cash, but the views were amazing! We were overlooking the outside of the city walls, down on the water and out to an island. You could continue to walk down the stairs to the water where people were jumping off the rocks and swimming in the water. We sat their with cold ciders and watched the swimmers. It was a great end to a very hot and crowded day! I really wanted to see a sunset that night at dinner. Dubrovnik was very expensive so I spent some time researching restaurants trying to find a reasonably priced place with a view. I wound up finding a place right outside the city walls. We got their around 7pm, before the crowds and got a great table with a view of the sunset. The restaurant, unlike most in the city center, was very spacious. They were playing lovely piano music and the views were spectacular. To our left were the city walls and to the right was the old fortress and the sunset. Dubravka 1836 Restaurant was really good and surprisingly reasonably priced. We liked the restaurant so much we wound up going back there the next night. After dinner we walked around the city for a while. It had cooled off and all the building were lit up. It was still packed with people walking around, and having dinner and drinks. Croatia is definitely a late night country. We were basically the “blue hair special” couple with whole trip eating dinner at 7pm haha!

Alley where our apartment was in the Old Town 

View at Buza Bar

Pile Gate-Entrance to Old Town 

Our last day in Dubrovnik we booked a morning kayak excursion. We had to meet down by the water at 9am (before it got too hot). The tour took us in kayaks, around the outside of the city walls, around Lokrum Island, into a cave, to a beach to swim and snorkel, and back to the city. Ross and I have kayaked quite a bit, but there were people of all abilities in our group. Our guide gave a tutorial and off we went…its pretty easy to figure out how to operate a kayak (or so we thought). There was a group of 4 Chinese girls in our group. We could tell from the start that they were in trouble. First of all they were dressed completely wrong for a half day in the water and hot sun. The one girl had on a shirt that was long sleeved, very tight around the wrists, and poofy in the arms. She basically looked like the Incredible Hulk. As soon as they got in the kayaks they were already going the wrong way from where the guide told us to go. They also could not figure out how to steer or stop the kayaks. Every 15-20 minutes the guide would signal us all to come together. You are supposed to guide your kayak to the group and slow down and grab onto each other so the guide could tell us stuff about the city, island, etc. Well, as I said, the Chinese girls did not know how to steer or stop. One group just came barreling into the group and careened their kayak right into everyone. The other group couldn’t figure out how to steer towards us at all so they just kept going straight and floated right into the cliff on the side of the island. It was so entertaining. At some point we actually lost one of the groups of girls and came to learn that they had to be taken back to shore on a boat. Overall, the kayak tour was fantastic. It was still cool enough in the morning an the water was calm. The island and city views were very pretty and it felt nice to stop and swim for a bit. Plus, we got some exercise! (Well, Ross did….he was in the back doing most of the work while I took pictures hehe). Ross and I did our own things later in the day. He chilled back at the apartment and I went and walked around the city. Yes, it was crowded but I really loved the feel of the old town. It was such a unique place and I really enjoyed just walking around aimlessly.

Side Note: Croatia is full of cats! They are everywhere! Sleeping in bushes in the shade, begging for your dinner scraps, drinking from the fountains…everywhere! Ross wasn’t too excited about it but I loved them! For the most part, they were all very domesticated and sweet. I pet a ton of cats the afternoon I was walking the city by myself.

Sunset View at Dubravka 1836 Restaurant 

Kayak Excursion

View looking down on Old Town Dubrovnik 

After 3 days in Dubrovnik we were off to Split. Unfortunately, we had to go back to the airport to pick up our car for the week. We couldn’t quite figure out where the bus pickup was. We walked up to where we were dropped off and figured out we had to go further up the hill. We got up the hill and then realized we had to then walk up a bunch of stairs. A random old man told us it was “80-82 stairs”. I counted them…it was 87! We were sweating buckets by the time we got to the bus pickup. It was hot already and we both had our rucksacks and small backpacks on! Luckily we didn’t have to wait long. The bus showed up less than 5 minutes later. Once we picked up the car we had to drive back through the city to get to Split. I really wanted to get some pictures of the old town from above. We tried to stop at a few look out points but we couldn’t access them. I had read that you could drive up to Fort Imperial, where the cable car goes, so I thought we could head up there for some pictures. Yikes…that was a drive! Literally one lane the whole way! We had to constantly stop to let cars pass and the road was awful and full of massive pot holes. Ross finally put his foot down and said, “Nope, we are done. We are stopping here for your damn picture!” Haha…he was right. If I had known the road was like that, I wouldn’t have asked him to drive up there. We wound up getting some great views down on the old town and the car was still intact once we got back on the road. The drive up to Split was very pretty. For the first 45min we drove along with coast and had views of the islands and cities down below. It was a little cloudy and sprinkled a bit but we still enjoyed the views. The craziest part of the drive was through Bosnia. Dubrovnik and the bottom part of Croatia are cut off from the top part by a little sliver of land that is Bosnia. You have to go through a boarder check, drive about 9 miles through Bosnia and then go through another boarder check back into Croatia. The traffic was so bad in Bosnia and it took forever to get through that small stretch. The crossing was ridiculous…they basically just waved us through and didn’t even check our passports.

Side Note: Ross and I have decided to give each of our rental cars a name. Our first one in Scotland was named “Mocha Mocha” because it was a Vauxhall Mokka X and this car was named “Big Red” because it was a bright red Skoda Fabia wagon.

We arrived in Split in the late afternoon, got the car parked and headed to our apartment. This one was quite the treat….we had a huge bed, washing machine, small kitchen, and a sofa! You don’t realize the things you miss from home until you don’t have them for a while. The sofa was one of those random things we really missed! The apartment was right by the water, and just down from Diocletian’s Palace, which is basically the center of town. We were up on the 2nd floor in a huge loft style apartment. We loved it and were so excited to have 3 whole nights there! We grabbed dinner from this really cool pizza place down the street, grabbed wine and beer from the shop, and sat on our couch and watched tv…the dream haha! The next morning we decided to explore a huge park called Marian Forest Park, just down from our place. We thought we would be able to walk all the way down to the end but soon realized we couldn’t because there was no sidewalk down to the end. It was still a nice walk and we found a few beaches to explore in the following days. We also found a route up through the park, to the top of a huge hill. There was a beautiful lookout point at the top where we could see all of downtown Split and some of the islands in the distance. The views were really nice and there were hardly any people up there (huge change from Dubrovnik)! After exploring the park we went back to our apartment for lunch and then headed over to Diocletian’s Palace. “Palace” isn’t really the best description….it’s more of a small, ancient, enclosed city. They are some of the best preserved Roman ruins in the world. They were built as the Emperor’s summer home and military camp in the the 4th century. Now the inner streets are a buzz with shops and restaurants and some apartments that people still live in. They were very cool, and again, so much less crowded than Dubrovnik. We had a wonderful first day in Split.

Diocletian’s Palace 

View from Marian Park 

Ruins-Diocletian’s Palace

We had contemplated doing a day trip to the island of Hvar our last day, but in the end we decided to just stay in Split, relax, and enjoy some lazy time. We both went for runs the next morning and then headed to the beach. It wasn’t the greatest beach in the world. The water was really nice but the beach was pretty rocky and not that comfortable to lay on. That night we decided to go to a little restaurant just down from our place, called Fife, to try some local cuisine. We had walked by it a couple times a day and it was always packed! At night around 7:30 there would always be a huge line to eat there! We went a bit earlier to avoid the lines and had a huge feast! We both got local dishes; I had pasticada with gnocchi and Ross had chicken in mushroom sauce. We also had a huge platter of grilled veggies and drinks. Ross didn’t particularly like the food but I thought it was pretty good. The pasticada reminded me of this dish my mom used to make, but she made it with potatoes instead of gnocchi. The best part was the entire meal cost about $20! After stuffing our faces at dinner we decided we needed some dessert as well haha! We went by a little street market where a woman was selling homemade sweets including cannolis!  We basically bought one of everything and they were all very good…especially the cannolis! We enjoyed our last night in Split drinking wine and beer, eating sweets, and sitting on our couch (it’s the small things in life sometimes).

View of Split

Side Note: Croatia definitely seems to have an Italian influence to its food. They ate a ton of pasta and the meats and fish were prepared similar to how they are done in Italy. Plus, the bakeries served a lot of Italian style sweets. I don’t eat pasta often but I ate a ton in Croatia!

The next morning we had to drive up to Plitvice Lakes National Park. We left early so we could spend most of the day stopping at Krka National Park. Krka is a massive park about an hour north of Split. It’s known for a series of seven waterfalls, hiking trails, a water mill, monastery, and catacombs. The main, most popular fall is Skradinski Buk, and you can go swimming there. To put it mildly, Croatia does not have the best marked parks, hiking trails, or general information around them either. We knew there were two ways to get to the main fall; you could either take a huge ferry there or hike, and we wanted to hike. We pulled up, parked, and went to get our tickets. The main entrance was absolute carnage! The line to get tickets had to be 100 deep and the line for the ferry was double the length! It looked absolutely miserable. I went to walk around to try and find the hiking entrance and couldn’t find it anywhere. We were about to say, “screw it,” and leave when I finally found an information desk. We were then told you have to walk up the hill about half a mile to get to the hiking entrance. We walked up there and to our delight, there were no lines! We bought our tickets and continued on our 3 mile hike to the falls! Once we got away from the crowds, it was very nice. The walk to along the river was so pretty and peaceful and we hardly saw any other people. Once we arrived at the Skradinski Buk though, it got pretty crowded again. There was a bridge with a lookout to the falls and it was slammed with people trying to get pictures…you could barely walk. I really wanted to get in the water and swim around, but after being squished on the bridge, Ross wasn’t feeling any of it. I went and got in the water by myself. Getting out to where you could swim was a little challenging because you had to climb over a bunch of slippery rocks. Once you got passed the initial entry area it was sooo nice. There weren’t as many people around an the water was perfect. Ross eventually came to join me and we had a nice time just taking pictures, goofing around in the water, and enjoying the nice day. We wanted to walk around the park a bit, but as I said, it was very badly marked and we couldn’t really figure out how to hike anywhere else. We found this “model” or “Insta-girl” or something like that taking all these pictures in a smaller waterfall. She was in a sequined bikini and had a professional photographer with her….it was crazy! We finally gave up and hiked back to town. Just as we exited the park there was a little swimming area down at the bottom of this bridge where cars could drive over the river. There were a bunch of locals swimming there and climbing up on the bridge to jump off of it. There were some lower parts on the under side of the bridge they were jumping off, which were pretty high. A few of the guys even came to the top of the bridge and jumped off! We watched them awhile and after some serious contemplation and little pushing from me Ross decided to jump as well! It was so high…I could never have done it! He jumped twice and said it was so much higher and scarier than it looked and I believe him! After that, we finished the walk back to town and then headed to stay the night in Plitvice.

Ferry boat on its way to the falls/View on our hike 

Krka National Park

We didn’t get to our hotel until kind of late and we needed to be at the park at 7am the next day. We did a bunch of research ahead of time and everything we read said to buy tickets for the earliest slot possible to avoid the crowds. Plitvice Lakes National Park covers over 73,000 acres with 3 huge lakes and hundreds of waterfalls. There are multiple hiking trails that take you above the falls or a series of  boardwalks that go right in front of them. You could literally spend 8+ hours there. We begrudgingly got up at 6am and were in the park by 7am. We decided to hike the K trail, which looked like a combination of a couple different trails that went both above and along the falls. It was the longest, hardest hike so we figured it would have the least number of people. The information we researched was correct. From about 7-10am there were hardly any people there. The views in the park are hard to explain and no picture can do them justice. It was breathtaking. The water was so blue and the waterfalls were everywhere! The hike along the top was the best because there weren’t many people up there and the aerial views down on the park were fantastic. The boardwalks were cool, but got so crowded with people who do not know how to walk in crowds. I actually thought Ross was going to throw this one old Korean lady in the water hahaha! I would love to come back to the park in the Fall or Spring when it’s not crowded….it would be unreal. If I was rich, I would rent the whole place just to have a day there to myself. We wound up spending the entire day (7 hours) in the park. After the long day in the park, we basically just grabbed dinner and went to bed! We had to drive to Zagreb the next day for our last day in Croatia.

Hiking the top trails looking town at the waterfalls 

Aerial view down on boardwalk and falls 

Walking on lower trail boardwalk 

Zagreb was basically just a big, pretty city. Honestly, we didn’t do much there. We were still pretty wiped from the previous day. We walked around town a bit and wound up at a bar in the city center. We sat and had a few drinks and people watched until the sun went down, grabbed a quick dinner, and went to bed. I do have to say our hotel was really nice. It was a Best Western, so I wasn’t expecting much but evidently BW in Europe are nice! Our bed was super comfy and breakfast the next day was so good! As dad would put it, we “jammed it in!” They had a huge spread and they even had peanut butter! I haven’t had peanut butter in over a month! We were going to spend a little time in the city after we checked out but we couldn’t leave the car parked so we just went to the airport. This was one of those days I am thankful for my Chase credit card. It gives us access to lounges that take Priority Pass and Zagreb airport had one! They had these amazing massage chairs that we sat in for ages. They also had free snacks, food and beer and wine…score! We spent a few hours there just relaxing and eating and drinking for free before we caught our flight to Zurich. Talk about a money saver!

Side Note: Our hotel in Zagreb was the first time we started “stealing from the breakfast” hehe. They had a tons of individual size butter, jams, creamer, etc. Stuff we use pretty often, but don’t want to buy the big size. We now have a huge bag full of stuff we have taken from the breakfast at our hotel! More to come on this story later.

Overall Thoughts: Croatia was a lot of fun! Besides Dubrovnik, it was very cheap and it was nice getting some warm weather and sunny beaches! We both really loved Split and l loved Plitvice Lakes National Park.

Negative: The crowds! We hadn’t dealt with much of that in Ireland or Scotland so it was a bit annoying at times. We did go during peak season though, so that’s on us. I would love to see Croatia in the Fall or Spring…I’m sure it’s amazing!