Zagreb & Plitvice lakes

A nice 4 hour train ride links Ljubljana with the Croatian capital of Zagreb and for the sake of another €3 I pampered myself in 1st class for the duration. My hostel was quite a way out of town which called for another sweaty 15 minutes cramped in a tram with Croatian commuters. I met a nice French girl called Marrianick who joined me for dinner and later on that evening there were 2 Aussie guys in our room, one of which had locked his locker with a padlock without taking the key out first! I lent him my multitool so he could file it off whilst the rest of us laughed at his misfortune and guzzled down some local Croatian beer. The next day I went for a wander around the town stopping for a fantastic street band and an enormous lunch that almost left me paralysed for the rest of the day. Finally I got an early night as I needed to get the 7:30 bus to Plitvice lakes national park to see the highly recommended (Cheers CC) falling lakes of Croatia.

The bus stops with little ceremony at the side of a road and hurls you into a forest assuming you have a full understanding of the local area. Fortunately for me, a Malaysian software engineer (who's name I cannot remember) was also lost and so we decided to wander around the lakes together. The lakes and waterfalls are absolutely stunning but being at ground level it's quite hard to see the full beauty of the lakes and unless they offer helicopter rides as part of the service, I'm not sure how you can really seem them in all their glory.

With the prospect of a 6 hour bus journey to Split ahead of me I decided to move on from the lakes after seeing around half of them in the record time of 3 hours. The bus was quite quiet so I sat back and enjoyed the view as we climbed up towards the mountains and over to Zadar on the coast. From Zadar, things got a little slower and the bus seemed to stop in every little town along the way before arriving after sunset in the historic city of Split. I was very tired and I suppose on balance it was fortunate for me that the guy sharing my room was one of the most boring people I had ever met as it made the decision to have dinner for one all the more easy.