Friday, May 1st: Italian Labor Day
This marks one of our last trips in Italy. *sniff sniff* We've known about the Plitvice National Park since we arrived almost 3 years ago. We decided to save it for one of our last trips, since it's not too far from us. We were glad we did because we hit it at just the right time in spring when the leaves and flowers were blooming, there weren't many tourists. Plus, it was still cool outside.
We started the 4 hour drive around 9am after grabbing a quick brioche and cappuccino from the square. Before we reached Slovenia, we filled up with gas. We'd never seen so many people at a gas station. Even the workers at the gas station were in shock. It was a European holiday weekend, but we never imagined that amount of people we saw. Hopefully, they weren't all headed to Plitvice.
As we drove through Slovenia, we kept seeing pigs roasting on the side of the road. After seeing about a dozen, we finally decided to stop at Pension and Restaurant Isabella to try some. Turned out we found a gem. The food was delicious! The employees were so kind and personable. Nick and I were so grateful to have stopped!
Yum!
Two hours later, after driving through rural towns, we reached Guesthouse Sven. The owners of the guesthouse were very sweet. To start, they showed us their place. The cleaners lived on the first floor, the owners lived on the second floor, and there were three rooms for rent on the third floor. We got the best view! You can see some of the Lower Lakes waterfalls from our bedroom window. It was really cold there overnight, so I was glad to not be sleeping in a tent. (which is what Nick wanted to do:)
After getting settled, we walked out our driveway and onto a dirt path for five minutes to the entrance of the Park.
We discovered you can only buy tickets the day of for the parks (not earlier); so we walked around the entrance area, grabbed a coffee, and bought a few groceries at the market before heading back to the guesthouse.
The guesthouse also had a few animals including: lots of chickens, a rooster, a cat that slept with the hens, a sweet little dog, and a herd of sheep! I was in heaven!
For dinner that night, we went to the best restaurant (at least according to trip advisor) in the area - Caffe bar Plum. They had the most delicious truffle pasta I've ever tasted. We liked it so much we went back again the next night. (There aren't too many dinner options in the area.)
That night the wind was howling. Nick and I both stared at the roof for several minutes wondering if it was going to blow off before falling asleep. Haha! It never did, thankfully:)
Saturday, May 2nd
We woke up early the next morning to hit the road (or path). First, we cooked a little breakfast fresh from the farm. The owners of the guesthouse gave us bread and fresh eggs. How amazing is that?!
We were some of the first hikers on the trail that morning. It was sprinkling out, so that helped keep some of the tourists away. Apparently, this national park gets around a million tourists each year. I still can't believe that statistic. We definitely didn't want to be out when the rest of the tourists were.
A tree had fallen over during the night blocking part of the trail. This little slug was still hanging on!
Our first real view of the waterfalls and lakes of Plitvice. I was so excited to see them up close.
We had bought a bit of food the day before. Nick couldn't fit most of it in his backpack because he insisted on bringing both of our wetsuits. Unfortunately, swimming is not allowed in the beautiful water of Plitvice National Park. (Darn!) Nick still insisted on bringing the wetsuits; so I stuffed the food into my rain jacket, vest and any pocket I could find.
Let's recap: Nick brought wetsuits that we would likely not be able to use, and I stuffed the food we needed into the few pockets I had. Haha! Story of my life. Haha! It's a good thing he's so cute. :)
We bought our tickets for 100 CZK each. (That's about $4!) Awesome!
We hadn't been in the park for more than 10 minutes before we saw this.
This was (and is) one of my favorite waterfalls of the whole park. There are stairs leading over rapids, without handrails to a 60 ft. waterfall.
My feet were hanging over the edge at this point. Water was bubbling up through the wood planks under our feet. It felt like we could just plummet over the edge at any minute....but, it was beautiful!
This is the Veliki Slap, or "the big waterfall."
No big deal. Just hanging out over a waterfall. This is the ONE and only handrail I saw the entire time.
Can you see the trout in the photo? The water was so clear you could practically count the trout.
I was so grateful to be on the trail practically alone with Nick.
Haha! I love Nick's face in this one. We couldn't believe our eyes! The lakes and waterfall's were so beautiful!
Next, we found a cave! Nick went in to explore and came out with his zipper wide open. Haha! I don't think that's what the cave was meant for. ;)
There were so many beautiful waterfalls. I took about 1000 photos on this day alone and had to narrow it down to less that 100. It wasn't easy.
After an hour and a half, we jumped on a little boat to cross Jezero Kozjak. It was just a 20 minute boat ride.
We had sprinted to catch the boat because it only runs every 30 minutes. We didn't want to miss it. We passed about 30 people on our sprint. They all were able to buy tickets and get on the boat with us. Doh! At least we didn't miss it!
We were the first ones off the boat at the Upper Lakes. There were about 100 people behind us, so we quickly snapped photos as we walked by these beautiful falls.
There were definitely more people out by this point, and the sun decided to come out as well. In order to get the photos we wanted we had to slow down a bit.
Nick was teaching me a few things in manual mode on my camera. Never too late to learn! I love the effect it gave! The only hard part was holding the camera still to get this shot. People were passing behind me and shaking the wooden platform.
I handed Nick the camera and told him to take a photo of me. I needed proof that I was really there too! ;P
Oh, how I wish we could have gone swimming here!
At the end of our hike, we walked through a heavily forested area. I was looking up to find a good photo op. Nick screamed and pushed me out of the way. I screamed because he screamed. Then I looked back to see something moving on the ground. I thought it was a snake, so I screamed again. And then I realized I didn't know what it was! So I screamed again! Haha! That all happened in about 2 seconds. :) Nick was laughing really hard at how ridiculous I was. Turns out that is just a fire salamander. They are very common in Europe, but also very rare to see. Lucky us!
We grabbed a quick lunch at a little cafe. A hot lunch sounded better than the little amounts of food we'd packed.
We hopped on the bus/train to go back to the mid way station. It was only 12:30 at that point, so we decided to hit up some spots we hadn't seen, and a few other places we had seen buy hadn't spent much time because we were rushed.
The crowds were definitely out at that point. It was getting warm and really busy.
Nick and I jumped off the path and took our time playing with the camera.
I wish I had taken a pic of the amounts of people. There were tourists from all over the world trying to get the best selfie possible.
The ducks at Plitvice weren't shy. They would stand right under our feet because they were so used to being fed.
At the end, we had to grab a quick pick-me-up. Nick's energy was fading fast after carrying the wetsuits for 7 hours. :)
We grabbed a hot, and VERY crowded bus back to the Entrance #1 where we started.
We had about a 10 minute walk back to the guesthouse after the bus ride. This is how Nick felt about taking pictures toward the end. :) Haha! Such a stinker.
We LOVED seeing Plitvice National Park. We understood why more than 1 Million visitors travel here every year. It was breathtaking on the entire walk. We were so grateful we made the journey.
That night we returned to Caffe Bar Plum. I tried the hamburger and Nick had
Sunday, May 3rd
The last day of vacation, we stopped by Pula, Croatia and Piran, Slovenia on our drive home. We expected it to take most of the day, but we didn't anticipate the amount of people on the road. (Duh! It was a holiday weekend.)
After a 3 hours drive we pulled into Pula. We were both famished. We parked, and quickly walked to a few places I had pinned on a map. They were both closed for the holiday weekend. Doh!
We found the next closest restaurant for food. We would have eaten anything at that point. We walked around Old Town as we were searching.
Bread never tasted so good. They brought us warm, delicious bread to start. I ordered the truffle pizza. It was so yummy!
On our walk back to the car, we snapped a few photos of the amphitheater. It's the 6th best Roman arena in Europe.
From what we could see, there was a film crew inside. We were guessing they were filming parts of Game of Thrones.
We jumped back in the car, for the hour long drive to Piran, Slovenia.
There was a HUGE traffic jam at the toll booth, and then again at customs. It was miles long, and traffic was literally at a stand still. Nick got off the autostrada, found a dirt road, and decided to try it. He will NOT sit in traffic if his life depended on it. He got really lucky and the dirt road led straight to the customs gate. It cut off about 2 hours of traffic in 15 minutes. I think we were both in shock that it actually worked.
It did, however, give us time to stop in Piran!
We really stopped just for gelato, but seeing a new town was pretty cool too. :)
I got orange/vanilla and lavender gelato. That's the one that Nick is licking. Haha! I couldn't hold the gelato and take a photo. :)
This man was walking by us while holding this cute dog. He stopped so I could take a photo. Haha!
Piran had an interesting Italian/Slovenian feel to it.
"Done with photos."
My sister mermaid. She forgot her shells. :)
We took a quick coffee break too on the water. We LOVE being near the ocean.
We loved seeing Piran for 30 minutes. It was a nice stop on our drive back.
We REALLY loved seeing the Plitvice Lakes and National Park. We had heard how much people liked seeing it, but I never really understood why until we saw it for ourselves. I don't know if we'll ever be back, but we loved every minute of it while we were there!
