Thursday June 17th
We are currently in Plitvice national park, we have a small room to
ourselves in humble house in the middle of nowhere! Well it is not the
middle of nowhere; there are several other “rooms” places in this
area, the supermarket (well small Market) is only 500 metres walk, the
most awful restaurant only 250 metres and the park entrance 1 km.
Today we went for our 4-6 hour walk in the national park. I think we
took a total of 4.5 hrs, which included sitting down for at least 45
minutes, the traffic jams and extensive picture taking. The park
consists out of several lakes which are interconnected with a lot of
awesome waterfalls. The water was very clear and a beautiful green-
blue, which added to the general amazingness. Unfortunately, it was
very busy in the park, which stopped you from feeling one with nature.
We are just so fortunate in nz that a place like this would not full
of tourist. Luckily, we found a better place to eat dinner this
evening and played cards. We are missing our tv, because we really
felt like watching the football but it is unlikely we would have
stumbled across a bar with tv in this place!
Friday 18th of June
To get to Zadar we drove through some nice Croatian country side, a
bare, rocky and impressive mountain landscape and some small towns. A
few of these towns consisted of poorly maintained concrete block
houses with bullet holes left in them from the war. It wasn’t far off
from what I had imagined but it still bought a flood of sadness for
the people who still live in this sombre environment. There are also
quite a few ruins of houses that were partially or completely
destroyed in the war and are just left there. More reminders of the
war for the people.
Zadar itself is nice enough. It consist of an old centre surrounded by
city Walls. Within the Walls are cute narrow streets and tourists
shops. There are some Roman ruins and the sea organ, which makes sound
with the motions of the waves. We really enjoyed listening to this,
while sitting in the sun and paddling in the refreshing sea water.
We have found a place outside the old centre, as it appeared difficult
not to. We didn’t have any accommodation booked, but were approached
by a woman who owned apartments at the bus station. This was the
nicest place we stayed at so far and are hoping for a similar deal in
Trogir tomorrow.
Wednesday 23 June
Ok so it has been a while since my last entry, but I ll do my best to
remember trogier. When we arrived from our overpriced bus trip we
planted ourselves with all our bags in the cafe with the best
flat screen to view Holland’s second match, which was won luckily. We
found a room on the bottom floor of someone’s house by asking at an
information point. It was super easy to get this room super close to
the old centre. Unfortunately, this place was not as nice as the one
in Zadar, but did the trick. After we settled in, we explored Trogier
a little which isa a cute historic town on an island joined up to the
mainland by 2 bridges. We had awesome pizza and lasagne by the water
and then We went for a swim and christened our bikinis. The beach was
rocky, but the water was super warm and clear.
The next day we explored Trogir some more, enjoyed massive ice creams,
Reading in the sun, eating more awesome food and watching NZ draw
against Italy. Man this was tense, especially being in an Italian
restaurant.
On Monday we took the bus to Split, where we were dumped (not
literally) somewhere in the new town of Split, which, what we saw of
it at least, consists of the ugliest high-rise apartment flats. Luckily
the old town was only 10 minutes walk. The weather turned for the
worse a bit this afternoon, but we explored the beach and went
shopping. The beach was a bit average, but the shops were good. Of
course I couldn’t help it to buy some more clothes (bag is getting s
little full now).
Our second day in Split was a bit rainy and it was a national holiday
so no shops were open. This meant we couldn’t do too much. The day
consisted of walking around a bit, napping, Reading, eating ice cream
and in the evening watching some more football and enjoying Split’s
life music.
Sat 26 th June
So we left Split on Wednesday morning and took the boat to Hvar, which
is an island 1 hr away from Split. This island is amazing! We were
staying in the nicest fully self-contained apartment with balcony and
view for 13 euro a night. Trust me, accommodation has not been like
this whole trip. Wednesday afternoon we enjoyed the heat,
explored the town and got distracted by the funky shops in the town. In
the evening we had some beautiful seafood. Overall, we just felt like
we were in heaven and were totally in love with the island.
The next day we took the bus to Stari Grad, which is the oldest town
on Hvar. We discovered that Hvar is a very steep rugged island, quite
similar to some Greek islands. Stari Grad was a quite nice old town,
but apart from swimming there was not too much to do here. Football
wad on the agenda in the afternoon/evening, because both NZ and
Holland were playing. However, the Croatian channels didn’t broadcast
either game, so it resulted in playing games instead. Luckily Holland
did win and NZ drew, which meant they unfortunately did not go
through, but at least they don’t have a loss behind their name.
Yesterday we wanted to take the bus yo the lavender fields, but found
out the only bus that day wasn’t going because it was a public
holiday!! So we decided to hitch, this was easy enough, just required
a bit of walking. We spent a while taking pictures of the lavender
fields and started our 6 km walk back. The view was nice enough and it
was a pleasant walk. We did manage to catch another ride for the last
km and a bit to town though. After this adventure we were absolutely
exhausted!! Showing we have been holidaying too much.
We are currently getting towards the end if our 6.5 hr boat trip from
Hvar to Dubrovnik, which is our next stop for one night before we
move onto Kotor.