Croatia

Overview

I had been in Croatia before, so at first I didn’t think about necessarily staying in the country, wanting to discover those I had never set foot in. However, my friend wanted to visit it some more and I hadn’t had the chance to go to Plitvices. He also made me realize I could go dive. We decided to stay a few days.

9^th August

The night before we arrived in Zagreb and I met a Japanese girl living in Germany who was going to visit Plitvice Lakes National Park in the morning. I really wanted to go and was looking at the best way to do the trip. My friend didn’t want to visit it and preferred going straight to Zadar where we would meet in the evening so I asked her if she wanted company, at least for the bus ride. We took a very early bus and mostly slept through it. At some point it was really funny though. We thought we had arrived but we hadn’t. 4 Spaniards were sitting behind us and joking about how the whole bus was ready to go and saying it could be worse. One said they could be dead. The other outbid him saying they could be in France. They laughed for a while and I said nothing laughing inside (Spain loves to make fun of Frenchs). I laughed out loud when later on one asked a question to his friend who didn’t have the answer, and I gave it to him in Spanish. They then asked me if I was Spanish and I said that I was French. They remembered what they had said earlier and their faces were priceless.

Once we arrived we took or tickets and I left my bag in storage before going on the trail. I walked with Mari up until the jetty where you could take a boat through one of the main lakes. The view probably would have been beautiful but the queue was really long, and the time the queue and the boat ride takes was as long as hiking. I went through all of the park, except for the upper lakes that I missed. I was confused at a crossing as to which path led to the entrance and what was the other path. Someone just told me it was a dead-end so I thought it wasn’t worth it. I had also missed a waterfall at the beginning so I went back to it after doing the tour. The lake and the waterfalls were incredible.

When I arrived I went to the hostel to drop my bag and try to find my friend. He didn’t want to move from the hostel so I went to the old town by myself to see the sunset. I had completely forgotten of the Sea Organ a friend of mine had told me about years ago but the combination of the sunset and the music made by the sea was spectacular.

10-11^th August

My friend talked to me into diving while in Croatia so I went. We were close to 2 hours on the boat before reaching our destination. There were 3 diving groups on the boat and I ended up diving alone with one of the dive instructor. We had 2 dives separated by an hour on the boat which is typical. Both dives were really nice, we saw lots of fish and sponges. There was also a beautiful Morena and many corals. When our dives were over we put off our equipment and everyone was back at sea before making our way back to shore.

In the evening we had to get a bus back to Zagreb. We went back to the same hostel and I had a lovely chat with the receptionist, a Nepalese man, who told me the best time to go was November. I’ll remember that the day I go. The next day we were both going, him back to Hungary, and me to North Macedonia. We walked around the city all day, going to all the main landmarks and just getting lost around until lunch time. We went to a really good restaurant my friend had been to before and I tried a local Strucki which was really good. In the end we were just chilling in the gardens until he had to get to the train station. I walked around some more, stumbled upon a local market with ripped raspberries and got some ice cream.

To Serbia

What happened next in Serbia.