Our much-anticipated trip to Croatia has finally come and
gone. Croatia was a place I was set on visiting when I learned we would
move to Europe, and I am incredibly glad we made it happen. If you can, I
suggest not travelling there in August. But even with all the other
European vacationers looking for sunshine and beaches, we easily found our
slice of paradise.
We flew into the Zadar Airport Sunday, August 11th. Why did I pick
Zadar of all the places in Croatia? Lufthansa had cheap non-stop flights
from Munich to Zadar, and you can get from the airport to the coast in under 15
minutes. Easy decision! We hopped into our rental car and headed to
Apartments Malenica in Sukošan – a small village just a few kilometers south of
Zadar.
When we first pulled in, I was a bit taken aback. I was
expecting a small apartment building on the coast (which is what it was), but I
wasn’t expecting all the RV-campers full of families to be surrounding the
place. However any concerns I might have had were totally unfounded – the
campers tend to stay long-term and are pretty settled and quiet. In fact,
we were very happy with this place. We had an entire apartment with a
kitchen and large balcony, AC, and the guys at the front office were very
helpful giving us advice on what to see and do.
Before heading on any huge adventures, we had to hit up a
grocery store. After confirming 3 times that the stores are open on a
Sunday (Bavaria has really messed with our heads here), we went into Zadar and
stocked up on food and supplies. The rest of the evening was spent
cooking, eating, cleaning, and unpacking. The sight-seeing would just
have to wait until the next day (though Noah did find a bit of time to jump in
the ocean).
We set our alarms early on Monday to give us time to make the 2
hour drive to Plitvice Lakes National Park. Plitvice is famous for its
series of cascading lakes – 16 in total – and the numerous waterfalls this
creates. We arrived around 10am, and already the parking lot was teeming
with people. We found ourselves in what would be the first of many long
lines – this one for the entrance tickets to the park. The park is
organized in various walking paths and itineraries, depending on how much time
you want to spend and what areas you want to see. We chose the ‘H’ path –
you start with their tram up to the top of the upper lakes, then walk through
the various levels of lakes down to a ferry boat which takes you to the lower
lakes, then ends with another tram back to the start. Simple enough,
right?
Ok, step one: take the tram up. We find the tram stop, and
realize we are one of many visitors waiting on the tram. When it finally
pulls up, I squirm my way on and find two seats. The tram quickly fills
to capacity, and after 10 minutes or so of waiting (no idea the cause), we
finally are on our way. We get off at the top of the upper lakes
area, and we are immediately greeted with beautiful lakes and waterfalls.
You follow a constructed walkway throughout the lakes, and most of the path is
actually on the water. It is absolutely beautiful – probably one of the
most beautiful hikes through nature you can find. The only downside – the
massive amounts of fellow tourists! As the path is only wide enough for
two people, we ran into many ‘traffic jams’ – especially around any really nice
photo op. But we still managed to grab two shots of us without causing
too much annoyance (I hope), and the slow pace let us take more photos than I
know what to do with.
After about two hours of walking through the upper lakes, it is
time for the next part of the ‘H’ journey – the ferryboat across the lake to
get to the lower lakes. This is where all hell broke loose, and the rest
of this paragraph is my rant if you want to skip it. This is the main
complaint we had of this park (and one shared by every other person we talked
to) was they simply do not have the infrastructure to handle large crowds of
people. We had to wait over an hour for the ferryboat, and as we got to
the front of the line we learned one cause of the massive wait. 95% of
the people were following the ‘H’ line – and these were the ones making up the
extremely long line for the ferryboat. Only a handful of people were
going on the paths the ‘wrong’ way. This caused there to be two lines for
the ferry – one extremely long one, and one that had maybe 10 people at any
time. And instead of letting the long line go at a rate of 3:1, or 4:1 –
it was 1:1. And as people realized this, many would leave the longer line
to jump in the shorter line and essentially cut. To make it more
frustrating – there were two employees there ‘managing’ this horribly.
People were getting rightfully upset at this lack of fairness, and one employee
just got angry and yelled, and the other just stood there helplessly. To
make matters worse– there were two ferryboat paths – a short and a long
one. Most people wanted the long ferry path – but if you wanted the short
one, you had no idea that you could jump to the front. That boat was
mostly empty, and many poor people waited forever as the line didn’t split
until the very end. And as you can imagine, people also started to take
advantage of this situation. They would claim that they wanted the short
ferry, hop to the front, then switch sides once they made it on the dock.
When Noah and I finally made it on the dock, I witnessed an Italian couple with
a child try to do this. I refused to let them in front of me, which
resulted in the couple using their limited English to tell me to ‘Shut
Up. I have a baby.’ Ok – you have a kid – how does that give you
the right to cut? There were plenty of people with children not trying to
take advantage of the situation, so why did this guy deserve special privileges
because he brought his 2 year old to the park? Don’t get me wrong, I am an
understanding person. If they had a dire situation, then I would let them
through. But the kicker – it was the OTHER ferry took you back to the
parking lot/a restaurant/a bathroom. This one took you to more hiking
trails. So why would having a kid mean you should get to the hiking area
faster than me?? And no, we couldn’t have just turned around – you had to
take a ferry or hike back two+ hours through the crowds going the wrong way to
get back to the start. END RANT.
After what felt like a lifetime, we made it to the other side of
the lake. At this point Noah and I were fully burnt out on the crowds.
Instead of following the ‘H’ path with the crowds through the lower lakes to
another public transportation line, we decided to take a nice, crowd-free hike
along a lake back to the parking lot. Sure, we missed the lower lakes,
but we kept our sanity. And this was needed for the last lines of the day
– the line for food, the line for paying for parking and the line for
navigating out of the parking lot…. I won’t even get into those. Well,
except to say that people should really pay attention to the fact that you pay
before getting into your car versus paying at the exit gate!
Now it’s Tuesday and I still hadn’t done any swimming in
Croatia. This needed to change quickly. Coincidently one of Noah’s
fellow DAAD Roche post-docs was also spending the week in Croatia, so we planned
to spend a day with them. The destination was Pag Island – an island
reachable by bridge and known for their sheep cheese (Paški sir).
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| What happens when non-native English speakers don't know the word 'goofy'... |
Our mission was to find a nice beach, which we did in the town
of Novalja. I finally made it in the ocean after almost 2 full days of
being in Croatia. And it was wonderful. We found that all of the
beaches we encountered were rocky beaches (versus sandy beaches). And I
learned that there are benefits to this – mainly you don’t end up with sand
everywhere. This is especially a bonus when reapplying sunscreen. I am so
used to rubbing in sunscreen with sand stuck to me, giving me the impression I
am sandpapering my skin. None of that here! And the rocks tend to
be very small pebbles, so most beaches are still easy to walk on.
After getting our fill of sun and beach, we decide we should
drive the final 25 minutes to the very end of the island. I mean, we had
already driven almost 2 hours, so why not see the end? To our surprise,
there was actually a little town, Lun, at the tip of the island. You
couldn’t drive the whole way, so we parked and walked along the coast the last
little bit. It was nice, but honestly not a must-see.
We returned to Pag Town for dinner, and stopped along the way to
pick up some of the famous cheese. My favorite was a version of the
cheese cut with some cow-milk, which reduced the intensity of sheep
cheese. On the drive back, Noah made the connection between the region
Dalmatia (where we were staying), and the Dalmatian dog breed. Turns out
they did originate from Croatia! This led me to explain the plot of 101
Dalmatians to Noah, which I must have watched a lot as a kid, because I surprisingly
remembered quite a bit of it.
After two long, adventurous days, we decided to take it easy on
Wednesday. We spent a few hours down in Biograd at the beach, and relaxed
in the apartment in the afternoon. For dinner, we decided to walk to a
restaurant in the center of the little village of Sukošan. The streets to
town took us by many small vineyards, and it took a lot of willpower not to
grab a grape for myself. Instead I just took photos.
We made it to the town center just in time for sunset, and after
dinner walked back in the moonlight to the apartment.
Thursday we were off to another island, Murter, that our
front-desk guy recommended. We found ourselves on Slanica Beach – our
favorite beach of the entire trip. Like the others, this was a
fine-gravel beach, but just two feet in the ocean the rocks were gone and only
sand remained. Not only was this nice for the feet, but it also gave the
water that extra bit of turquoise color.
We signed up for a boat excursion for Friday. I wanted to
visit Kornati National Park – a series of 90 or so islands of the Kornati
archipelago – and the only way to get there is by boat. We boarded in
Sukošan at 9am, and about two hours later we were in the park. Our first
destination was to see the beautiful white cliffs on one of the islands, Dugi
Otok. We then docked on the other side of the same island in the Telašćica
bay.
From here we had 2 hours of free time. We first did the
short hike up to the tops of the cliffs to view them from the land. We
then went down to the salt lake Mir, which is saltier than the water of the
surrounding ocean. It isn’t very pretty, especially compared to the clear
ocean water nearby, but it was refreshing to get in the water. We
returned to the boat where they had lunch prepared for us – grilled fish, a
meat patty (pljeskavica?) and some fresh bread.
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| Bread not pictured because it didn't stay on my plate long |
After lunch we were back on the water, headed towards one of the
small islands for another swim break that helped split up the time it took to
return to Sukošan.
We soon found ourselves already on our last full day in Croatia,
and we still hadn’t visited Zadar’s old town. After spending the day
resting and swimming in the beach just down the street from our hotel, we
headed up to Zadar in the late afternoon. It definitely impressed us
both.
One of the main attractions is the Church of St. Donatus and the
Roman forum. The church was completed in the 9th century, just on the
northeastern part of the Roman forum. The forum was founded by the first
Emperor Augustus - the Romans began invading the region as early as the 2nd century. In the
same square is St. Mary’s Church, founded in the 11th century for a closed
order of Benedictine nuns.
Zadar is also known for its Sea Organ. Based on my little
bit of research before our trip, I thought this was simply a set of stairs into
the ocean that people can sit and people watch, or catch the sunset, and the
‘music’ would be the sound of the waves. I didn’t realize that there
would be actual music caused by the waves radiating out of the
steps. It’s a pipe organ played by the ocean! Basically there are a
series of 35 pipes underneath the steps, ending in whistles with small
openings. So as the waves hit the pipes, it pushes air through, resulting
in different chords based on where the waves crash. Amazing.
The last major tourist attraction in Zadar’s old town is the
‘Greeting to the Sun’, or ‘Sun Salutation’ – located right next to the Sea
Organ. This is a huge circle of solar panels that represents the Sun,
followed by small circles that represent the planets. The scale isn’t
perfect – but it is a very pretty model of the solar system. At night the
whole thing lights up with various colors and effects.
Our
Croatian week had finally come to an end, and we found ourselves back home in
Munich the next day. I would definitely recommend visiting the beautiful
country – though if you can, avoid peak tourist season.
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