Plitvice National Park

No running this morning. We didn't have time for a full run, so C & I just did some cross training. We had to be ready for a 6.30 breakfast of cured meats, cheese, eggs, cereal, bread, coffee-so-thick-your-spoon-stands-up, orange juice, and ladyfingers.  Yum!

The early breakfast came on account of our wish to get to Plitvice National Park before the crowds.  Plitvice is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and it features over a dozen lakes interconnected by a series of waterfalls.  The lakes are set in a gorge, the water is super-blue and crystal clear (you can count the trout!), and the whole series of lakes is ringed with walking trails. The largest lake has a series of boats that crisscross it, and there's a tram (that reminds me of the San Diego Zoo tram) that runs back and forth between a few of the resting areas. We wanted to get to the park early to avoid the crowds, and our 7.20 arrival time was perfect. As we were getting out of the car, a busload of elderly Americans was also getting disembarking. Fortunately, our legs are faster, so we were able to hit the trail quickly and get ahead of the Wisconsinites.

We spent the day wandering the park, climbing paths to up waterfalls, wishing we could swim the water, resting our weary legs on benches, and taking lots of photos. The weather cooperated - the temperature felt in the mid-to-high 70s, and the sun spent half of the day hidden behind cloud cover. Like most visitors to the parks, we started at the lower lakes and walked up (the views are better, as the waterfalls are generally in front of you). On the way up the lake, I used my wide angle lens and took a bunch of photos (including some shots that I photoshopped into HDR composites).  Here are a few:

Yes, those are really fish.

At the top of the falls... which you can't see...

Long shutter speeds == more drama.

At the top lake, we stopped for lunch. S & E both had cheeseburgers, which were super-greasy and tasted like fried spam. The 'cheese' part of the cheeseburger was a kraft single that the staff didn't even bother unwrapping before tossing it onto the plate. C & I fared significantly better: we had sausages (with spicy mustard) and Ozujsko beer, one of the Croatian national brews. It's a tasty lager and goes well with sausage (and, as I've discovered, fish, pizza, squid, octopus, salad, and meat pies).

At lunch, I swapped out lenses to my LensBaby Muse, which adds a nice optical blur to the images. They're much less refined, much more mysterious. Anyhow, here are some shots from the walk back to the car.

After the park, we returned to the house for a bit of a siesta and downtime. I caught up on some emails (but not the big ones that require a lot of reading) and did some photo processing before dinner.

Dinner was at the pension and was exceptional. We started out with some plum brandy. Then a salad of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and two kinds of cabbage. A chicken noodle soup. A platter of food including roast chicken, chicken skewers, grilled veal, two kinds of sausages, grilled trout, sauteed escarole, roast potatoes, steamed veggies, and braised mushrooms. More plum brandy. A cherry/raisin cake for dessert. More plum brandy.  Yum!

Tomorrow we're up early again.  We want to hit the road to get to Motovun in time to spend the day there.  So far, this Croatia trip has been super-successful - only two more full days here before we go our separate ways!

We're splitting from Split.

I'm a great punster.

6.00 - C and I rise for a morning run. We intended to do 4 miles, but we got completely lost, and by the time we got back to the hotel, we had done over 6.  Oops.  It's still hot and way humid, but S assures us that as we take on the last half of our Croatian journey, the weather will cool off significantly.

8.45 - S and I are packed and clean. We grab a pastry on the way to tour the cathedral, baptistry, and crypt in Diocletian's Palace.  The place was packed with tourists on a port-o-call from a big cruise ship, so there were small groups of people following tour guides with strident voices. It made the entire experience in the cathedral a little disappointing. The highlight was the few minutes that we were totally alone in the crypt, but as we were leaving, S kept turning around to make sure that I hadn't turned into a zombie.  Mu-ha-ha.

After that, we did a little shopping for honeys - success!  We found rosemary, cherry, fig, peach, and raisin.

10.45 - check-out of the hotel, followed by a quick walk to catch our airport shuttle. Once at the airport, it took us a good while to get on the road. There was some mix-up with the rental car reservation, so we had to replace our first car (which was an economy and didn't fit all of our bags) with a full-size. Once we were on the road, the driving was fine, and we arrived at our pension at 3.30pm.

We checked in easily, dropped our bags, and headed out for lunch. C, E, and S got pizza, but I ordered a local meat pie speciality that I'd been seeing on menus since Dubrovnik.  I stuck to seafood before, but now that we're in land, I'm shifting to meat.  The meat was delicious! Lamb and beef, spiced, and filled with a little bit of cheese.  Yum!

The restaurant we ate at was also doubled as a ski equipment shop and what looks like it could only be a training hill.  Here's S in front of the shop (which was closed):

And C and I in front of the lift.

We wondered if perhaps the lift took skiers over the hill to another part of the mountain with more skiing, but a quick review of the trail map suggested otherwise:

After dinner, a quick drive around town to get our bearings, and then back to the pension for a chill night. I did some laundry, am going through emails, etc. We've been talking about a very early start tomorrow to beat the heat, so it might be an early night to bed for us all...