The stay in Split was pre booked at Hotel Slavija. It was a nice quiet hotel with a number of restaurants around serving salivating seafood chicken and meat.
The most recognisable thing about Croatia is how it projects itself as a top tourist destination. Apart from being naturally beautiful, Croatia is also known for its child friendliness and cleanliness. We were once told, the taxi drivers kill their off peak hours by throwing a piece of paper on to the road and place bet on the time before it's been picked up by the cleaning crew. The longest it ever took was 20 minutes!
The marina is only a 5 minutes walk from the hotel and outside the city wall to enjoy the breeze from the shimmering Adriatic sea. You will find a good number of restaurants with open canvas roofed extension all along this water front.
A major attraction here is Diocletian's palace. It takes only a few minutes walk, but small alleys like this are everywhere and force you to stop and appreciate the settings.
When you reach the palace, you immediately feel the scale of this imposing Roman ruins. One could easily spent hours wondering about this marvellous place imagining about the royal life style it once catered to.
The bell tower next to this open court also is a major attraction. It is highly recommended to climb up the narrow winding steep steps to the very top.
Brilliant view of brightly coloured roof tops with patches of lush green trees against the backdrop of beautiful distant hills is what you could expect from the the tower. You could also get a good view of numerous criss crossing alleys from here.
In the evening we walked to a nice restaurant through the streets with beautifully set shops on both sides. This picture is taken through one such shop's window.
Aswa suggested a nice restaurant from his Lonely Planet book and we all settled for a 'stress free' dinner.
Day 2
The hotel arranged a cab and a driver to take us to Plitvice National Park. We started soon after our breakfast with a plan to visit the beautiful coastal town called Zadar.
It was a bright warm day. The endless narrow alleyways with white stone buildings lined all along were very inviting. Getting yourself lost here is the easiest way of exploring this small town.
After finishing a couple of ice creams we went to the quayside to see the famous musical sea organ, an aerophone made on these broad steps of the sidewalk.
It's an ingenious concept created by Nikola Basic. The steps are made like a pier but not reaching far into the sea. 35 musically tuned tubes are placed vertically down to reach the sea beneath to create air columns. The waves on the sea oscillate the air column through the whistle opening of each tubes and creates music.
The Zadar quay also spot a large circular solar photovoltaic cells generating electricity for a brilliant light show in the evening.
Ideally one should wait to see the sunset, but we decided continue our journey after lunch in one of the many restaurants set up along the quayside road.
Drive from Zadar to Plitvice is a good experience. As you progress, you could notice the landscape changes quickly from bright warm lowland to foggy cool highlands. I took this picture of the hut in golden evening light when we stopped for a refreshing break.
We reached Plitvice late evening. There are not many good hotels to stay, but few of them satisfy basic needs.
Expect to have poor WiFi availability in this are. Also you should check if they serve breakfast.
Day 3
The forest was beautiful, the veil of mist was slowly moving away. Many tourists were seen walking towards the park's main entrance. There's a place for keeping backpack next to the information centre. It's only a room where you can pile up your luggage, but not good for leaving anything valuable as there's nothing like a secured locker. Here we also booked a taxi to the capital city of Zagreb for the evening.
It was a pleasant surprise to know that the family ticket costs only half of a full ticket. There was a nice walk descending towards the lakes and we had no clue on what to expect. The weather was wet and cold but not as bad as you expect to see in the UK. The first view of the lake was exhilarating. Pristine Jezero (lake) Kozjak appears waking up with slowly disappearing fog revealing beautiful trees in early autumn colours along its shores.
The lakes are broadly divided into two, the upper lakes and the lower lakes. With our limited time at the lakes, we decided to take the lower one. This leg include 4 separate stages. The first one, the red path shown on this map, is to cross the lake from the ticketing office to reach the landing point where the route splits for the upper and lower lakes. The green path on this map is a long beautiful cruise along the lake to the cafe' at the far end. The orange path is the trekking route (difficulty level: moderate) to expose the breathtaking views of the lake from the top of the cliff. There's a parallel path along the lake, but in rainy season it's usually flooded and remains closed. This trek gives an opportunity to steep descent through a dark moist sink hole from the top to the lake (difficulty level: tough). This eventually leads to a boardwalk across the lake, just above the cascading water to a very high narrow waterfall. The blue path takes you to the nearest bus stop where you can get a free ride back to the main entrance.
https://goo.gl/maps/7bu1e
View of the ticketing office from the pier. The lake is deep and the water is very clear. The dark long narrow shadows are fish.
View from the pier, one of the many waterfalls that drains the upper lakes to the lower lakes.
Leisurely cruise in Lake Kozjak towards the landing point 'P3' is guaranteed to keep your senses nourished with hills on both sides.
The most attractive thing about this lake is the range of colours that appears with changing sunlight.
The restaurant at the landing point has a decent menu for hot food. A trekking route (orange coloured on the map) starts from here pass along the coast and then crosses the lake over cascading water. The trail then splits into two, one along the water's edge and the one on top of the canyon. If you choose the top one, it will lead you further downstream to a beautiful viewpoint. From here we could see the lake Milanovački Slapovi and a boat for the 'P3' stop on the Jezero Kozjak.
The trail to further downstream takes you to another view point where Lake Gavanovac and Milka Trnina waterfall can be seen in beautiful colours.
There's a barrier between the lakes Gavanovac and Kaluđerovac and the water cascading over it forms another waterfall. At the top of the canyon an ancient sink hole now serves as a passage to the lake at the bottom. A board walk leads the path across the lake to a narrow but very tall waterfall.
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