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My main reason for travelling to Croatia was to visit Plitvice Lakes – with a secondary trip to Dubrovnik.

The plan was to spend 3 nights in Plitvice. I arrived late in the evening on the first day after visiting Zagreb and the Museum of the Croatian War of Independence, so this would leave me with 2 full days to explore Plitvice.

We stayed at the Ethno Houses Plitvica Selo – a 4* hotel with a campsite-like feel, consisting of several different wooden cabins each with about 6 rooms. The first night I was on the first floor of one of the houses in room 22:

On the second and third night, I asked whether we could move into a room on the top floor of one of one of the houses, giving a bit more room, more windows and even more unique design (I’d seen the photos on the website) – the hotel staff agreed and even moved the bags into the new room during the day while I was out – room 19:

The hotel was excellent and well recommended, the staff were also very helpful, and the breakfast – although quite pricey – was nice too.

However, the main reason I went to Plitvice wasn’t for the hotel!

Plitvice Lakes National Park is the oldest national park in Southeast Europe, the largest in Croatia and a member of the UNESCO World Heritage register since 1979. The park is made up of 16 lakes that cascade into each other in a series of waterfalls over a length of 8km. As well as the waterfalls, the lakes are also renowned for their deep blue or green colour. Bears and wolves also live in the park – although rarely seen by visitors!

As well as the pictures below, make sure you take a look at the photo gallery at the top of this post!

I first visited the lakes in early 2000 when I was about 11 or 12 with my family on a holiday to Croatia only shortly after the war had ended, before Croatia had become so well known as a tourist destination. Despite most of my holidays from that age in my life all blending into one in my memory, Plitvice Lakes really stood out to me as something I remembered well for being a unique and beautiful place.

Ever since going to Plitvice for the first time I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve recommended it to people as a good place to go for a holiday, so given that it had been about 10 years since I went I decided I’d really like to go back and planned my Croatia trip around it.

Plitvice Lakes has a number of routes that take you on paths around the lakes, including wooden walkways over the lakes themselves and up close to various waterfalls – it’s incredibly well maintained and the wooden walkways allow you to get near to the lakes and waterfalls in a way that would be impossible otherwise. It also has a boat that takes you between three piers on the biggest lake to get between the entrances and different walks, and get a better view of the main lake itself.

One of the routes – from Entrance 1 to Pier 3 (near our hotel) also takes you up high to get a good view of the biggest waterfall in the park (Veliki slap literally “Large Waterfall”), and the lakes and walkways below:

 

I wasn’t disappointed with my decision to go back, and the lakes had actually hardly changed at all since my first visit, the same boat taking you over the lakes was there and the same wooden walkways over lakes and near waterfalls. The only thing that had changed was more people – literally coach-loads of people.

I did feel it was a shame how many more people there were there than last time I went – but it didn’t take away from the lakes in any way at all. It was still possible to appreciate the lakes at your own pace as long as you were happy to occasionally step to the side of the path for a few minutes and let the latest wave of coach passengers rush past.

I really would recommend driving there yourself and taking a few days to look around rather than going on a coachtrip, all of which seemed to rush through the park on a tight schedule of a few hours. It might not be the easiest place to get to on your own, but there are buses from Zagreb (takes a few hours) or you can hire a car and stay in a hotel like I did.

Whatever you do though, try and visit this unique place at some point before it gets more and more popular – the park currently records around 1,200,000 visitors per year, and this is only going to increase dramatically – especially now Croatia has joined the EU.

Next Post in this series, Split, Croatia