Day 3--Up in the mountains

Nacionalni Park Plitvicka Jezera

A small cyclamen

Up early for another bus ride...I'm not sure my sit-upon bones will ever be the same.  This time we headed east and a little north to Plitvice Lakes National Park, a World Heritage site, about and hour and a half outside Zagreb.  On the way we passed through an area that had been heavily shelled during the war with Serbia in the early 1990's.  There were numerous houses with bullet holes, and several totally destroyed that had not been repaired.  This war ended in 1995, and Croatia this July was admitted into the European Union, although they have not yet abandoned their currency, the kuna, in favor of the Euro.

Highest waterfall in park-78 m

What color is this?

And this? (see the fish?)

Arrived at Plitvice Lakes after a drive through a thickly forested area, mixed hard and soft woods.  Plitvice Lakes is a series of 16 lakes in a canyon of limestone.  The water is saturated with calcium bicarbonate, which forms travertine layers.  This leads to barriers to water flow, which forms dykes and eventually water falls and cataracts.  The lakes themselves are beautiful blues and blue-greens.  We walked (and walked) down the cliff side, across the Lakes on the travertine dams on wooded paths, and up the canyon until we came to a place were we took an electric boat back to the other side.  All this took a couple of hours or so.  We then climbed stairs (231 according to our guide Irvana) to a restaurant where we had a traditional Croatian meal.  This consisted of soup (carrots, potatoes, lamb heart (I didn't eat the heart bit.)), shredded cabbage salad,  spit roasted lamb (very tasty) and potatoes.  Dessert was an apple strudel.  Very different from the Mediterranean diet of the day before.

One of hundreds of cascades

Enjoy the walk

Highly recommended

Sorry, all that was left of my rissotto

After a ride home I do not remember because I slept the whole way,  and a little rest, we went out for dinner on our own.  We ended up at an Italian style place with very good food, Surani had spaghetti, Patrick, gnocchi, and me, risotto.