Croatia - mixed reviews

Plitvice Lakes National Park

A little lunch in Hvar

Sunset comes to Trogir, Croatia

"'MIXED REVIEWS?!?!?!'  I just saw those sweet pictures of yours, and Croatia looks like the most awesome place on the planet!  You're crazy!"

These are probably the words you are thinking to yourself right now, but let's back up a little

So we last left our heroes in Ljubljana, Slovenia, having a great time, eating the first (and likely last) nachos of the trip.  We were anticipating a day of travel to get from Ljubljana, Slovenia to our next stop in Plitvice Lakes, Croatia, and what a day of travel it was!  Our plan was to go from Ljubljana to Zagreb, capital of Croatia, to Plitvice to Grabovac (only 10km from Plitvice and home of our highly-rated guesthouse).  One stop, right?  We had read on the internet that buses were a big thing in Croatia (spoiler alert!), so we figured we would probably take a bus from Zagreb to Plitvice, and then catch one to Grabovac, but no big deal because it was so close!  This is the map we had planned in our heads:

Ahhh...so simple... (Scale: 1 in = 20 miles)

Leg 1: Train from Ljubljana to Zagreb (2 hours)
Leg 2: Bus from Zagreb to Plitvice Lakes National Park (2 hours)
Leg 3: Bus from Plitvice Lakes National Park to Grabovac (15 min)

So the train is a regular, every morning at 8:30, so we thought "OK, it will take some time to find the bus station and buy tickets, maybe we wait a little while for the bus, if we leave at 8:30, we should be in Grabovac by 2:00."  So we confidently set off, and everything went according to plan. 

Sidetrack:  On the train to Zagreb, we had our passports checked and stamped by two different passport crews, one from Slovenia (in the European Union) and one from Croatia.  Not sure why, our best guess is the Slovenians want to make sure no one gets out who shouldn't get out, and the Croatians want to make sure of the opposite.  It was kinda tense both times as teams of serious-looking people with guns come into the car to scrutinize passports and ask questions.  Upon handing over our passports to one of the teams, I had this conversation:

Serious-looking man with gun:  "How long you be in Europe?"
Seriously-confused thinking Brannan: (Does that mean how long have I been in Europe, how long will I be in Europe, or the how long before I leave Europe?  What is the right, non-suspicious answer to this question?  Think quick!!!) "um...two month?"
Serious-looking man with gun: "Hmmmmm...(tense pause)...OK." *Stamp*

Whew!  That's right, I'm good under pressure.

Anyways, we made it to Zagreb in two hours, according to plan, and caught the bus to Plitvice Lakes at 11:30.  A two-hour bus ride later, and the bus pulls into the park right on time and we hop out, and this is what we see:

The shack of oh-so-many broken dreams and promises

It's nice, right, except for being in the middle of nowhere.  We had read online that there are buses and park shuttles that go from the park to Grabovac every ten minutes, no problem, just flag one down, hop on, pay your Kuna, and you're there.  Little did we realize our lives would soon revolve around this simple process.

Roughly 10 minutes after arriving, waiting in the shack, a shuttle pulls up with the park logo on the side, so we waddle up with smiling faces and ask "Grabovac?"  We were slightly confused when he said no and shook his finger at us, but we figured maybe it was this particular shuttle.  This process repeated three times, and after the fourth bus turned us down, we decided to ask the information people.  Long story short (too late!) that's not how the process works, and we had been waiting an hour at this point but we'd better get used to it because buses really only come at 5:00 p.m, still 2 1/2 hours away.  In summary, to go the last 10km it took us 3 1/2 hours.  This was repeated the next day, when we went to go see the park, got done at 2:30, and waited until 5:00 for a bus to come that would take us 10km.  In total, in two days we spent 6 hours waiting in that shack for a bus.  The park was indeed beautiful, but not really worth that amount of time doing nothing.  Here's the park though!

Beautiful waterfalls everywhere!

They'd built these little walkways so you could get right there!

 I don't actually know anything about the park, or what makes it so unique, or what formed it, but I do know it was beautiful and I've never seen anything quite like it.  In retrospect, I'm glad we went, but I really dislike waiting around for more than 30 minutes for anything, and it sort of soured our experience at the time.

The water was SOOOO clear!  It's kind of Croatia's thing, turn's out.

Ahhh, some nice, easy stairs...wait a second!

Tallest waterfall in Croatia!  Wahoo!

The start of Autumn, just a hint of color

View from our guesthouse.  It was nice, just in the middle of nowhere with no public transport

Ahhh, waiting for the bus in rural Croatia.  Now that's fun!

After the second day of waiting multiple hours for a bus, we decided not to go back to the park, but just to hole up in our room for the weekend, and go to the coast on Monday.

By now we knew how to flag down buses because we had read in some nice British people's guidebook that we were to (direct quote) "stand in the middle of the road and gesticulate wildly."  We did, and sure enough it worked!  We were on our way to the Dalmation Coast!  Once again, our nemesis, the Croatian bus system reared it's head again.  Below are the routes, with green being our ideal, but unlikely option, blue being what we thought was logical and likely, and red being what actually happened.

Not exactly as we had figured...

As a result, what we thought would be a 2 or 3 hour bus ride turned out to be 6 hours.  Ugh.  But we got to Trogir, which claims to be Europe's best-preserved medieval city (founded 300 BC) and a UNESCO World Heritage city.  It sure was pretty cool.

The whole place felt like you would see a sword fight at any second

I'm defending the city gates

Some ancient history is just in the way, as evidenced by the soccer field in front of an ancient watchtower

View from the tip of the island, protected by a cool castle

 After a little while of wandering around the small town, I said to Melanie "Does this feel like Venice without the water?"  Sure enough in the main square there was a plaque describing how Venice had ruled Trogir was owned by Venice for over 350 years.  The Venetians were some serious empire-builders!

Venice part 2

Are we on the Grand Canal again?

Part of it felt like the opening song to Beauty and the Beast.  I expected people to pop out of the windows "Bonjour!"

 We enjoyed our time in Trogir, but since everything in Europe is a bazillion years old, Trogir didn't especially stand out to us.  But it was a great place to stop for the night before continuing to Split (blech) and Hvar, which we are loving, and which I keep wanting to say like a pirate.  Despite the bad taste in our mouths initially, Croatia has redeemed itself in one glorious day in Hvar (avast!), a we are loving it now.  But that's another post, for a different Beasley.