We are finally getting around to posting about Croatia now
we are in Montenegro and have decent internet. Trying to get good internet connection
and speed in Croatia and Bosnia has been close to impossible, resorting to any
means possible to get signal, so we thought we’d take advantage of the rain and
stay inside and get this done.
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| The makeshift couch at the door to get internet |
Seriously Croatia is incredible, having 7 days to stay and
play –we spent a fair bit travelling which was a downer. Dubrovnik was stunning
and although 2 days it rained, the final day was breathtaking, allowing us to
see it in all its glory without the other tourists.
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| Our favourite photo |
We arrive late in Zagreb (the Croatian capital) to the
world’s most confusing railway station, where people have to walk so far to get
out that they risk their lives crossing the train tracks. We hoof it to our
hotel, and check in at the smokey pub opposite. We dump everything, work on the
blog, try to upload and encounter the slowest internet so far, we struggled to
send a single email let alone post on the blog. Zagreb was only a stopover for
us, so there was no opportunity to check it out.
Plitvice Lakes
We awoke at 6am in Zagreb, packed and headed to the bus
station for the bus to Plitvice Lakes. Plitvice Lakes is meant to be one of the
most beautiful places in Eastern Europe, and this UNESCO site draws the crowds receiving
over 1.2 million visitors a year. We make it on the bus and notice the bus has
not only the driver but also a conductor. We have found the work is very highly
administrative in Eastern Europe and often things have more processes and more
people than it would at home. Case and point, long distance buses at home the
bus driver will do it all, and there is less tearing bits off and stamping
multiple times etc. Even at the train station in Hungary we noticed people
getting hand written tickets from ticket offices and lots of stamping, and then
that blue transferable paper (we haven’t seen that in years).
The Drama – yep it’s
getting tiring
The conductor places our backpacks under the bus, and we
notice that one of the other Aussies on the bus has the same pack as Simon. We
arrive at our stop the conductor takes out the only 2 packs and jumps back into
the bus. Simon looks at his pack, something isn’t right, it looks the same but
the lock is wrong, this is the wrong bag. When realising our passports are in
that pack, we look at each other with a look that says things that can’t be
said on this blog. The bus door has closed, so we run and bang on the door
before the driver drives away. We tell the conductor the bags have been
swapped, luckily we know that the other guys got off the stop before (only a
few minutes up the road). Thankfully our Airbnb host was there to pick us up so
to save the bus from turning around the conductor and our host jump in the car
and speed away to the second stop. To our relief the other Aussies had figured
out the bag wasn’t right and were waiting at the side of the road for the
exchange. We feel so blessed because this bus was going another 5 hours, so
imagine if that was our stop…
We dump our bags, and walk down to the National Park entry,
you can tell its low season, everything is shut, there are practically tumbleweeds
blowing along the road – a far cry from peak season. Part of the lakes are
closed today, but none the less there is still glorious nature to be seen. We
take the ferry across the big lake and start one of the most scenic walks we
have done. The water is crystal clear and exquisite shades of aqua and
turquoise. The water in one pool breaks off into small waterfalls and it
cascades down into the next pools of the lake, and this continues on a scale
like we have never seen before.
As with all things coming in low season has its ups and
downs. Ups being basically nobody else but us, where in the high season it is
bumper to bumper with people. Downs being, its not as beautiful as summer, the
trees aren’t green, the sun is not shining and it was cold, but again no snow.
But no complaints here, it was stunningly beautiful. It was hard to capture
with the day so miserable, but the memories are good, and we would love one day
to see it in all its summer glory. To see it in summer check out this googleimages link
have a look it’s incredible.
We walk and climb to see waterfalls and get to scenic view
points for about 4 hours. It was at this point that the park was empty and the
wind was blowing in a way that made us feel a little uncomfy with the clouds
rolling in black above us. We find the only restaurant open in the park at a
hotel, and warm up. Warm and satisfied we retreat to our little apartment, with
the most space we have had all trip so far, even having a living room. The
evening brings the challenge of planning the rest of Eastern Europe in a part
of the world that hasn’t quite figured out how to make travel information
available online. Mostly we just have to get somewhere and rock up to the bus
station and hope something is running in the next few days. I believe one of
our earlier lessons learnt was ‘trust the system’, but it’s easier said than
done.
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| The view over the top of these beautiful mini waterfalls |
Split
In the low season buses are infrequent and unreliable in
Plitvice Lakes, and the worst part is there is very little information online. The
bus was due to come at 9:45 in the morning, but we had read that they don’t
stop there unless you flag them down, so you need to be there early just in case.
We wait in the cold from 9:15 until 9:50 and when our bus came we flagged
wildly to ensure he stopped. The actual trip to Split should take 2.5 hours but
on this bus with all the stops and going via another city it takes a little
over 6. We brought the laptop and watched an entire season of Modern Family to
keep us entertained, long rides are just part of our lives and we are very used
to it, but buses are the worst. At least with trains you have space to walk
around, buses are cramped and just generally the crappier experience.
We arrive in Split late in the afternoon with the sun
setting on the harbour. This stunning historic town of Split sits on the
Adriatic Sea, where it was once home to the Roman Emperor Diocletian and his
enormous palace. This palace eventually fell out of favour and the city grew
out from the palace. We find our incredible little apartment, its set in these
amazing winding cobblestone backstreets, where all the stone houses have green
shutters on the windows and overlooks the sea. We went out for dinner and found
a great traditional Croatian restaurant; we have come to learn that like the
rest of the Eastern countries, vegetarians will starve as everything is meat,
meat, meat!
Split was very pretty with its white stone buildings, a maze
of cobble stone streets that were a delight to get lost in. It is incredible to
think the whole main part of town was once a palace. Unfortunately due to being
there mid low season combined with it being a Sunday the place felt flat, and
lacked identity. Looking at this beautiful town it was clear to see that in
Summer it would be buzzing, and the sea would be so inviting with Italy beckoning
across the water. Boarding our bus at 5.15pm we set off to Dubrovnik and
finally arrived at around 10pm. Another long ride.
Dubrovnik
Arriving so late and too far from our apartment to walk we
took a rare cab ride to where we stayed. When we walked into our apartment we were
stunned at the amount of space we had! A full bedroom, living room, bathroom
and a small kitchen with the most incredible view over the old town and marina.
Magical! Unfortunately the weather turned on us and would rain, sometimes
monsoon, for the next two days complete with wild winds.
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| The view from the apartment |
Even with the weather against us though it is very easy to
see why Dubrovnik is so popular to visit. It is breath takingly beautiful. The
walls surrounding the old town look almost new and shine in the floodlights at
night, the terracotta roofs of the stone buildings create a bright contrast
against the pale stone. There are two monasteries, two churches, seemingly
endless narrow side streets, stairs up the mountain and a wide grand street
right through the centre. For those who watch Games of Thrones Dubrovnik is where the scenes for Kings Landing is
filmed and even as we entered the old town on our first day we came across a
closed off area full of cameras, horses, carriages and actors in medieval style
clothing. We aren’t sure if it was GoT being filmed or something else but still
quite cool.
We took it easy the first day starting with the Franciscan
Monastery next to the Ploca gate which has a beautiful cloister inside and one
of the oldest still operating pharmacies in Europe. The afternoon was spent
just exploring the myriad of backstreets, hills and paths around the old city
seeing what we could discover. The streets could be described just as we said
for Split with green shutters, cobbled streets and each place with their own
lantern lighting up the street. Sadly much like Split, Dubrovnik is a seasonal
town and 70% of restaurants, bars and cafes are closed.
It started to rain, and we thought we would spend the
remainder of the afternoon inside, but alas, all galleries and museums were
closed in low season, this was a bit frustrating. We did find a neat little
Bosnian restaurant for lunch which served very nice, good quality food and
introduced us to Cevapi which are little skinless sausages. They are everywhere
and are delicious. We returned to our apartment and set up a makeshift couch in
the little kitchen, the only place in the apartment we could get Wi-Fi (see
picture at the start of the blog). That night the wind and rain pelted down and
we stared out our window over the marina watching the waves crash over the
buffer and the small boats bob around like toys in a bathtub. It let up briefly
allowing us to get out and have some great takeaway from a little place that
did delicious Cevapi burgers. We quickly took it back to the apartment before
it poured down again.
The weather did not let up overnight and the next day was
thoroughly miserable outside. Luckily just outside our place we had the best
bakery in Dubrovnik, or so our apartment owner told us. We would be inclined to
agree as they make a mean chocolate croissant and the best pain au raisons we
have ever had which became our staple breakfast for the 3 nights we spent
there. This weather was bugging us as our number one goal was to walk the walls
of Dubrovnik but with the weather like this and tickets $40AUD for both of us,
we wanted to make sure we went when we could get the most out of it. We were
hopeful that the weather would change so we held off going up the walls.
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| No this is not night, this is the clouds for the first 2 days... |
With the weather so rubbish we spent the day trying to find
a coffee shop to plant ourselves in and get some blogging done and plan some of
Bosnia and Montenegro. Never have we wished for a Starbucks or McCafe so much
as this day! Whilst both of these chains serve average and overpriced coffee
you can at least get pretty decent internet connection – something which is
sorely lacking in Croatia. We walked all over the old town trying to find a
decent coffee shop with Wi-Fi only to find smokey bars with garbage internet connections.
After spending literally hours searching for a place and trying two café bars
only to be let down in both we gave up and returned to our apartment and our
makeshift kitchen couch to get the blog up for Hungary. With the weather being
what it was we took the opportunity to go to the local cinema, at $5AUD a ticket
how could we pass that up? We saw Wolf on
Wall Street which was a great way to let the rain pass. Afterwards we
walked the streets a little and took some night photos before the rain came
again.
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| A good example of what low season looks like... |
And on the third day the weather turned! We looked out our
window over the marina and the water was calm, the wind was low and there was
bits of sunshine breaking through the clouds. Finally we could get out on the
city walls we were so desperate to walk and up the mountains to get a proper
look over the city and islands. We had 3 days in Dubrovnik but really we only
had a day to actually see the main sights. It was evident that the locals had been waiting for a sunny day too, because there seemed to be a lot of washing hanging about, somehow managing to make these streets even more interesting.
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Dropping off the walls we went back to the cable car and
making the ~400m above sea level ascent to the top of the mountain range above
Dubrovnik. The views are unbelievable. The sun was out and shining and the
coast was illuminate beneath us with the old town looking like a scale model on
display.
The views out to the island were amazing and we just picture
ourselves on a yacht cruising island to island, swimming and relaxing in the
summertime. It was just stunning. Before we descended we had a coffee in the
café that’s overlooks everything from the cable car station. In the summer most
people who visit Dubrovnik usually do several day trips to the nearby islands.
We would not hesitate to come back to this beautiful part of the world to
explore these islands.
When we got back to sea level we had some time to kill
before our bus so we went to the beach. The nearest beach is a tiny strip of
sand just up the road from where we were staying. Unfortunately it was covered
in litter. Mostly plastic bottles which looked like they had washed up during
the storms of the previous nights. That aside it was a pretty little spot with
crystal azure water and gentle surf.
There has been a lot of travel in Croatia, so even though we
have had nearly a week in this gorgeous country, it doesn’t quite feel like a
relaxing stop over with 20 plus hours on a train and bus. Bus travel is not fun
at the best of times but continuous stopping and ‘relaxed’ scheduling make it
more tedious than it needs to be.
Lessons Learnt:
- Croatia is not as cheap as you might think it is. Food and transport in particular, but accommodation and drinks are affordable
- Don’t expect anything to be open on a Sunday in the low season
- Expect to wait a long time for busses that don’t run to a tight schedule, it takes a long time to get anywhere
- Internet speeds in Croatia are the worst we’ve experienced in Europe
- Indoor smoking is common and it’s difficult to find non-smoking venues
- Croatia is definitely best visited in the summertime. There might be a lot more people but the weather and scenery would make up for it.
Parting Thoughts:
Croatia has some incredibly beautiful scenery that truly
takes your breath away. It will go on our to visit in Summertime list, probably
along with the amalfi coast in Italy. The streets are magical, with the sun
shining you could wander for hours and not even mind getting lost as you turn
up another narrow walkway which is like a postcard picture. It is a shame that
it is so spread out across the country without direct connections. The indoor
smoking gets tiresome and makes you feel sick most of the time. Your clothes
and hair stink and only a good wash gets it out but it’s honestly pointless
because you’ll just cop it the next day in another place.
Simon and Amy xoxo
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